Creativity strikes! (in either sense of the verb "to strike")
Last night I was a bit down on myself. I'd been putting off attempting to write a poem for the BA Universe poetry competition for a good few weeks now, and today's the deadline. So I sat down and stared at a blank page for a couple of hours. Nothing. No inspiration. Not a sausage.
Sorcha being Sorcha, recriminations and thoughts along the lines of "I'll never be able to write ever again!" starting whizzing around my head, until I eventually thought sod it, and went to bed to read a book about prime numbers*.
This morning, when I woke up all rested, I came into work, stuck a pencil to paper and whacked out the following bit of doggrel in the space of about a half hour. Yeah, it's silly, and nowhere near as clever as the beloved's rendition of the twins paradox in haiku form1. But I'm happy, the muse has not deserted me.
The Eleventh-Hour Physicist
I left it too late to start writing.
(Life's been so much of a race!)
Poetry's strange and exciting.
I'm far more at home when in space.
I'm a scientist; I can work round it,
when writer's block mangles my rhyme.
In quantum equations, I've found it!
A method to travel through time.
So into the future I journeyed,
read the prize-winning poem, each word.
Came back to the present unworried,
(for we all know that space-time is curved).
But as for the poem, I forgot it.
So you'll have to put up with this sonnet.
___________________
* "The Music of the Primes" by Marcus du Sautoy - a very readable book indeed on pure mathematics. The beloved went to a lecture given by the author (I unfortunately was in the middle of fighting off the lurgy so didn't go) and brought me an autographed copy back as a consolation present.1
1 Yes, we're both geeks... But you knew that already, didn't you?
Sorcha being Sorcha, recriminations and thoughts along the lines of "I'll never be able to write ever again!" starting whizzing around my head, until I eventually thought sod it, and went to bed to read a book about prime numbers*.
This morning, when I woke up all rested, I came into work, stuck a pencil to paper and whacked out the following bit of doggrel in the space of about a half hour. Yeah, it's silly, and nowhere near as clever as the beloved's rendition of the twins paradox in haiku form1. But I'm happy, the muse has not deserted me.
The Eleventh-Hour Physicist
I left it too late to start writing.
(Life's been so much of a race!)
Poetry's strange and exciting.
I'm far more at home when in space.
I'm a scientist; I can work round it,
when writer's block mangles my rhyme.
In quantum equations, I've found it!
A method to travel through time.
So into the future I journeyed,
read the prize-winning poem, each word.
Came back to the present unworried,
(for we all know that space-time is curved).
But as for the poem, I forgot it.
So you'll have to put up with this sonnet.
___________________
* "The Music of the Primes" by Marcus du Sautoy - a very readable book indeed on pure mathematics. The beloved went to a lecture given by the author (I unfortunately was in the middle of fighting off the lurgy so didn't go) and brought me an autographed copy back as a consolation present.1
1 Yes, we're both geeks... But you knew that already, didn't you?