Hello and welcome to our virtual pub of poetry!

This is Michelle (aka Mish) from mishunderstood.wordpress.com bringing you Tuesday’s Poetics.

As I sit here trying to focus on writing a prompt, I am surrounded by NOISE!! Incessant pounding of hammers against plaster, the high-pitched buzzing of drills and the random, unidentifiable crashing of who knows what landing on the floor above me. To add to the commotion, the contractor’s radio plays a steady stream of heavy metal as if to mask it all (although I do say I like Metallica). This is my life at the moment during a major renovation in our home.

So I have decided to surrender to the chaos and use it as inspiration for our prompt today.

What is noise?

Emily Dickinson ponders the paradox of how a cheerful sound can trigger other emotions.

The saddest noise, the sweetest noise

The saddest noise, the sweetest noise,
  The maddest noise that grows,—
The birds, they make it in the spring,
  At night’s delicious close.

Between the March and April line—
  That magical frontier
Beyond which summer hesitates,
  Almost too heavenly near.

It makes us think of all the dead
  That sauntered with us here,
By separation’s sorcery
  Made cruelly more dear.

It makes us think of what we had,
  And what we now deplore.
We almost wish those siren throats
  Would go and sing no more.

An ear can break a human heart
  As quickly as a spear,
We wish the ear had not a heart
  So dangerously near.

In the following piece, I think the repetition drives home the relentlessness of noise. It also made me consider the way a plethora of noises overlap and seem to compete with each other.

[       ] noise
By Victoria Adukwei Bulley

& even when we said we were alone there was [       ] noise on the radio & there was [       ] noise in the car & there was [       ] noise all over the internet & there was [       ]  noise in the atmosphere & there was [       ] noise trapped in the system & there was [       ] noise in the economy & [       ] noise was the economy & there was [       ] noise on the train & there was [       ] noise on the road & there was [       ] noise at the board meeting & there was [       ] noise on the field & there was [       ] noise on the kitchen counter & [       ] noise in the cutlery drawer & there was [       ] noise at the hospital where there was [       ] noise in the blood & there was [       ] noise in the water supply & there was [       ] noise in the ocean & there was [       ] noise eating the ice caps & the polar bears were drowning because of it & washed up on the beaches then was a morbid & off-white [       ] noise & there was [       ] noise in the street & there was [       ] noise in the ozone a whole hole’s worth of [       ] noise just counting down the days & there was [       ] noise in the photos of us because [       ] noise was on the lens & there was [       ] noise on the brain scan & there was [       ] noise during the exam where there was [       ] noise scratched into the desk & there was [       ] noise in the texts & there was [       ] noise in the census & there was [       ] noise in the law & there was [       ] noise on Friday at the cinema & there was [       ] noise at the seminar & there was [       ] noise at the peace talks & there was [       ] noise in the rent & there was [       ] noise on the wellness podcast & there was [       ] noise in the obituary & there were little [       ] noise cookies remaining even after carefully choosing reject all & there was [       ] noise in the inquest & there was [       ] noise in the commission & there was [       ] noise in the system you hear because [       ] noise was the system & too [       ] noise was reform & there was [       ] noise in the wounding & there was [       ] noise in the wording of the apology the [       ] noisiness of which made entirely void the apology & there was [       ] noise in the diversity statement & there was [       ] noise in the group chat & there was [       ] noise in the joke of it all, there was [       ] noise in the delivery & there was [       ] noise in the returns process & in the practice & in the prayer & it was there in the room with us still even when we said we were alone even when we swore that we could not hear it

I am sure each of us has our own endless list of daily external noises ranging from five o’clock traffic to the pings of social media notifications. We may find beauty or sadness, peace or annoyance in the sounds that surround us.

Internal noise can be very loud. Thoughts and struggles overwhelm as they swirl around in our brains. A chattering mind disrupts us from engaging in the present moment. Unspoken emotions can be deafening.

Then of course we have societal noise. We are continuously bombarded by information, misinformation and opinions. It can be difficult to sort through or silence to give our mind and body a rest.

Today I’d like you to write about noise of any kind. There are many ways you can approach the theme. It is up to you but here are a few ideas:

What do you consider to be noise pollution? Is there a buried emotion screaming to be heard? What noises give you joy? Sorrow? Bring us the noises of nature or a noise you find most irritating. Maybe there’s a sound of nature that you find irritating. I won’t judge! Fill your poem with noise to paint us a picture of an event. Use noise metaphorically to express turmoil or unease, whether internal or external. You can play with onomatopoeia in your poem if you’d like but it is not required.

Now go find a quiet place and pen us a poem about noise.

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