| THE GREENWOOD MANSE |
| INTRODUCTION |
| Welcome, one and all, to the poetic saga of the unnamed family and the endless travails and tragedies, which befall them within the confines of their estate, the Greenwood Manse. This series began as a one-off poem, The Bed, which was inspired by a canopied, ebony four-poster I saw at a house party in Boston back in 1991. The owner of this beautiful bed, which was dressed in black satin sheets and black lace drapes, was a pert Goth-girl, with a devastating arse, and an obvious distaste for my Psychedelic looking peasant shirt from Mexico, replete with multi-colored mushrooms and a great fuchsia-colored eagle on the breast. All I could think of was me and her in that bed, but I never even got the time of day from her; although I did get the inspiration for this poem from her bed, so all was not completely lost! The Bed seemed to go over so well with my friends, and the few admirers who would comment on my open mic readings,.so I decided to make a sequel. This time around, however, I wanted to do something different. Instead of the vampires of the original, I would write about a werewolf. The result was Luvian's Pelt, and involved the Grandmamma from the previous poem, as a young girl.This was much fun, and I even made up my own word, ululame, to say what I wanted to say, and still fit the rhyme scheme. Many years later, I began to write a third poem, a prequel, which is now so much in vogue, since George Lucas decided to film the beginnings of his own saga. The story would explain the roots of the mayhem which befell the family, and how the Grandmamma came to own the old house in the first place. I never finished this piece, although I did get about half the way through the story I wanted to tell. When I was in Florida (from 1999>2002) I toyed with the idea of writing it out as a novel. I never got around to doing this, although I did have a young writer-friend of mine try her hand at it for a while. Unfortunately, things never really took off, and I am right back where I started. I may still write that novel some day though. I have, however, written a first chapter to a vampire novel for a creative writing class I took at Broward Commmunity College, in Florida. I do intend to elaborate on that someday as well. To see what I have of that piece, click here. All in all, these poems were my first attempts at writing something ambitious, and they still occupy a special place in my reportoire as well as in my heart, despite their occasional awkwardness and lengthy unwieldliness. One of the things which stopped me continuing the third piece was the fact that I was only part of the way through my story and already had two and a half pages of couplets, which I felt was already too much sing-songiness to subject any modern reader to. After all, I wasn't Keats, and this wasn't high art here, just a "penny dreadful" in verse. Nevertheless, I offer it here in it's unfinished state for you to judge how it might have ended. I worked the story out in my head, so I know what happens. What do you think? |
| CHURCHYARD NUNCHEON This was a piece I wrote around the same time as the Greenwood Manse, in a similar style, but which doesn't pertain to the storyline specifically. It is about a girl whose nanny is trying to talk her into having picnic in a cemetary.It was inspired by the BBC version of Sheridan LeFanu's Uncle Silas, and was called Angel of Darkness, featuring Peter O'Toole in the role of the sinister Uncle Silas. |