Secrets

[shewhomust]

Kate Fox is a performance poet, which means that she does something very personal, and she does it very publicly. She keeps a secret blog, and wrote in it:

It was interesting to chat to shewhomust about blogs after. She has a LiveJournal one, which as she said is sort of a secret blog, since it's anonymous. But it has a community element because people comment across blogs of similar interests. It made me think that actually shewhomust's blog really is secret because it's under a pseudonym and something that she's set up to explore her thoughts and share them with others, not really to share her private self. Mine is hidden in the open and tends to go "look at me, look at me, I'm secret!" and we're back to the public/private opposition again that writers negotiate so ambivalently.

Another way of summing up that opposition might be to say that Kate is a poet, and I'm not.

In the same conversation, I asked Kate to allow me to publish one of her poems here; Kate's day job is at a local radio station, and I particularly liked a poem which gives away a few trade secrets of its own.

Caller 103 wins the Madonna tickets
She's counting
one elephant, two elephant...
like waiting for fake tan to dry
or the blue line on a pregnancy test

He's counting
green lights on the phone board.
Numbered up to seven
not one hundred and three

He sees seven flashing green,
adjusts his jeans,
prepares to choose.

She's got a feeling in her water
she says to her Mum,
starts to press redial.

He's got to get a caller to air now,
jabs buttons, "Hello" and "Keep trying"
rejects too old voices, not quite right voices.

She's listening to her inner self,
like it says in Cosmo,
doing it when it feels right.

He's listening for someone
who'll go off like a rocket on bonfire night,
just a breath's enough to tell.

She hears the phone being picked up
and everything goes blurry.

He shouts "You're lucky caller 103!"
and has to turn his headphone volume down.

Triumphant, buzzing,
telling her Mum
she knew she’d be caller 103…she just...knew

Replaying her reaction,
telling his producer
he knows how to pick a screamer...he just knows.

© Kate Fox, 2005

Comments

[profane-stencil.livejournal.com]

That's a great poem. Thanks for sharing that, too.