Number 28, Afraid of Swimming

Sunday 27th May 2012.  This must therefore be day 32 I think, so I am 5 behind schedule.  I will catch up easily enough I think.  I thought I should take a look at some Pam Ayres poems to make a comparison.  It turns out that when you simply count the syllables, hers conform to a regular count no more than mine, and it is all in the way they are read.  Since no-one has heard me read my poems they have to scan first time for the reader.  Since Pam Ayres is well known and her delivery easily recognised she can get away with it.  I am encouraged though, that I am travelling in the right direction.  I have tried to record some of them on video, with varied success.  I need to develop a style, some confidence, and practice them so that the right emphasis and intonation is given to every word and syllable with 100% accuracy, so that the emotion, humour and meaning is fully illuminated.

It is a project which requires more input than one might at first imagine.

Number 28, leaving 327 to go





Afraid of Swimming

Do chickens swim or do they sink,

What is it grown up people think?
Has anybody taken one,
To see exactly how they’ve done?

Perhaps they need a rubber ring,
To get the basics of the thing:
I know I had one first of all,
When I was really very small,
And if I’d gone in unassisted,
Might not've very long existed!

I was not a natural swimmer;
Talent there was not a glimmer,
But in time I persevered,
And swimming gradually appeared,
To be a possibility,
I saw with less hostility.

But every time that I went under,
Terror got me and no wonder!
Perhaps the chicken given time,
Would do the crawl or breaststroke fine.
Then perhaps what it could do,
S’teach me and other chickens too!

© Stephen Saunders