Poem of the week
NOW working on a book of football poems (see www.footballpoets.org/) Eddie Gibbons, a playful, candid and poignant writer, is here in typically unsentimental mode, exploring the nature of poetry. This is from his 2003 collection The Republic of Ted (Thirsty Books, £6.99). He is at Aberdeen's Word festival on Sunday 14 May, 4pm.
The cat flap is closed.
Is the cat inside or outside?
The pessimist's answer:
The cat is inside, curled up on the rug.
The optimist's answer:
The cat is outside under a truck.
Schrdinger's answer:
The cat is both inside and outside
at the same time.
The poet's answer:
Who cares if
the cat is sat on the mat
or the cat is splat and flat?
The world is all imagining:
the rhyme's the thing.
You can borrow The Republic of Ted from the Scottish Poetry Library, which also lends by post. Phone: 0131 557 2876 E-mail [email protected] See www.spl.org.uk