new poem: your beauty washes over me like rain

This poem began with the inspiration, and a single line: 'Your beauty washes over me like rain.' I knew in advance that I wanted to tell a very particular story with this poem, with a focus squarely on the other. I also knew that I wanted to use painting and writing as metaphors, to include references to the romanticism of Keats, Shelley and Brontë, and that I didn't want the speaker addressing the other directly within this poem. Bear in mind that I was thinking this even as I was looking at the single line that I had written on the page at this point: 'your beauty washes over me like rain.' The motivation to address the other directly was where the poem began. I wanted the poem to be about the world of the other, to be concerned strictly with her experience, and my first line emphasized the speaker and immediately drew attention to the effect of the other upon the speaker. I felt it also read as the first line of a love note. So I decided to set it as a 'hidden line' within the poem. My thought-process at the time was that if I embedded it as the third word of each line I'd still have enough freedom (within this prefixed structure) to paint the type of narrative that I had in mind. So that's how I began writing, with each word of the line written out like this:

your

beauty

washes

over

me

like

rain

On seven different lines, on a second page.

Then I began writing the poem around these words. It basically wrote itself very quickly. How to structure was what had me tapping my pen for a cup of tea or two.

But with the poem written, I asked myself if the reader would necessarily even notice the line, now that it wasn't immediately obvious, which is why I ultimately decided to go with it also as the poem's title.

And that (in essence) is the behind-the-scenes on my poem, 'your beauty washes over me like rain'. Click here to read the poem.