Announcing LoSoRhyMo

Everywhere else it’s NaNoWriMo – [inter]National Novel Writing Month for those who don’t retain camel-abbreviations. I’ve decided that here it’s the much less ambitious LoSoRhyMo, or Local Sonnet Rhyming Month. My aim is to write not 30 but 14 sonnets this month. Hang the quality, I’ll just get them done. I plan to stick with, or at least start out with, the version of the sonnet Vikram Seth used in The Golden Gate, and to refer to current domestic events. If (which seems unlikely) you’re drawn to join me in the enterprise, please avail yourself the comments button: feel free to write any kind of sonnet you like, and to cover any subject that takes your fancy.

Sonnet 1: On selling the family home
Our home for more than twenty years
Our haven, our Three Seventeen,
Where children’s laughter, rage and tears,
And adults’ too, and in between
Have filled the air, where stains and scratches,
Dents and holes, loose threads and  patches
Are records of our history
With love’s abiding mystery
Was sold on Tuesday, seven thirty.
Our shell, our outer skin, alive,
We’ll trade for one point five two five.
It’s brick and wood, some bits quite dirty.
We’ll shuffle off to somewhere new:
New owners, may it welcome you.

9 responses to “Announcing LoSoRhyMo

  1. I cannot match your eloquence. The only thought that comes to mind right now is “OMG”

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  2. I know. I should have put it up as a straight news report. But prose failed me. Not that verse did much better, of course!

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    • No verse was perfect. I’ll reread a poem many times, and this one will always remind me of the brief time I could call 317 my home in Oz: sheer magic indeed.

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  3. great idea to have a LoSoRyhMo, no sonnets for me I’m afraid though I’ve just finished a good second draft of my own ode to Brucelee, new novel ms “the Farmer’s Wïfe”
    Good poem too, though sad. I’ve still got some dirt from the tractor shed. I could send you a bit if you like.
    Love
    Edwina

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  4. Thanks Edwina. I can’t tell if you’ve actually mistaken my meaning, but my little sonnet isn’t about ‘Brucelee’ – we’ve just sold our house in Annandale. We won’t have to move out for possibly six months, but we’re looking for somewhere to buy. I look forward to reading The Farmer’s Wife in the fulness of time.

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  5. OMG, what a way to announce this! “one point five two five” sounds satisfactorily euphonious, and I hope it feels satisfactory in all senses. So, what are the plans for The Editor/Writer and The Art Student? Are you planning to move far?

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  6. We’re on the search, M-H: Petersham, St Peters, Dulwich Hill, Marrickville. We looked as far afield as Hurlston Park, but that was stretching the elastic tether close to its limit. And yes, the figure is satisfactory for other reasons as well as euphony.

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  7. The sonnet is beautiful. I too could read it several times. I feel an awful pang of sadness every time I think of you selling, so I can’t imagine how you must all be feeling about this

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  8. Thanks, Mary Ann. I guess you’ll be needing to write your own sonnet soon! Actually, though the sonnet thing is really just for fun, it turns out to be a way of finding out what feelings are lurking the under the business of selling and buying

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