First Annual Cabin Fever Writing Competition 2

Well, it is now time to reveal our most worthy second-place writer.  She is well-known for her music reviews, has a very uniquely named and incredibly popular blog called the Bad Tempered Zombie .  I am not even sure how to describe her as I have known her for quite a long time - literally more than a couple of decades!  She is a wonderful, unique person, who is immensely talented at whatever she puts her mind and pen to. ( I am totally biased here, which is why I had to have impartial judges to decide on our winners.)

Barbara Bruederlin freelances out of Calgary.  She writes reviews for several music magazines.  Her knowledge of Indy music astounds me, (she can vouch for the fact that I am a complete Luddite in this area - lol) and I am always impressed by the depth and humour in her writing.  Our judges commented that there was "great use of colour - like points of punctuation" and that the poem was "Enigmatic, has me guessing/posturing but (the) sense of dread and hopelessness is strong."  She also writes Haiku  and occasionally posts it on her blog.  Barb was one of a few individuals that chose to submit a piece of poetry for Cabin Fever.

Congratulations, Barb!


Here is her poem:

barricade

Blood red walls

bear silent witness to

the death

of dreams.

Periwinkle

beckons you to the water,

offering glimpses of escape.

Day pass.

Stay of execution.

When the pounding stops,

when the water stops, 

silence descends.

Silence follows you to the grey room.

Silence peers through frozen glass with dead eyes.

Silence cannot escape this wall of white.

The dead world holds you firm inside this cage

I will be sending your prizes sometime next week.  They include a beautiful pair of earrings from Jeanine Elder of Neepawa, and a Tim Horton's card, as well as a couple little surprises.  Unfortunately, the batteries are dead in my camera so I will post the picture of them tomorrow after it is charged.  (My apologies - I feel like a bit of a smuck for not being more prepared with the camera!)

Closet Poet

I was laughing to myself the other day, totally in sympathy, when I saw how the kids at school were struggling with poetry. With poetry, it either clicks right away and you get it or it doesn't and you have to struggle through. I have seen tons of kids struggle but enjoy the rewards of their struggle when they have their aha! moment. Compounding this is finding poems for a certain theme and understanding how to share and reword it into a critical essay with a reasonable amount of intelligence. Again, easy if it clicks - a real curse when it doesn't.

I was talking to a couple kids how I had had a themed poetry assignment when I was in high school and how I dealt with it. At that time, I mentioned that we also had a very small library and, unlike today, absolutely no internet for resources. Being a typical teenager, I procrastinated until I had only the weekend to do this long assignment and I had to work one of the two days at my part-time job. I think we had to find ten or so poems to use. I hit a dead-end getting poems because the library was closed by the time I was off work but I wasn't willing to call it quits - my marks were good and I wasn't willing to take a fall, especially because of my own idiocy. After a brief moment of thought (remember - time was of the essence), I sat down and popped off ten or so poems of varying lengths and styles dealing with the theme. I added made up names for the poets/authors and anonymous ones for some of the others. It was easy to write a critical review of the them because I had written them and knew exactly what the poet intended and the styles that were used! As I recall, I got one of my best marks for that assignment.

I still laugh to myself when I think of it!

(That little microsoft guy above says it all!)