‘A Hymn to the Ordinary’

Zsa Zsa Gabor’s very fond of a door
especially in oak or a light sycamore –
her sister-in-law loves a long corridor
and a friend of her father has a thing for his floor –
it was Dior before but it’s not anymore –
we should try to be more like Zsa Zsa Gabor.

Don’t follow the path of Sylvia Plath
whose poems were all about Daddy and myth –
an anguish of language to the moon and child-birth.
Perhaps she’d have stopped going on about death
and been less consumed by her terrible wrath
if she written a few about sofas and baths.

So sing to the splendour of a nice Kenwood blender,
be a fan of the pan, be a kettle defender –
don’t grumble at the humble, applaud your breadboard –
if you don’t find plates great and they don’t fascinate,
go out in the garden and consider your fence –
you’ll soon realise that it’s fuckin’ immense!

COMMENT

‘I wrote this during the super Lyric iPod course in response to Rishi Dastidar’s prompt that we ‘find unexpected brilliance in the mundane’. I like silliness and I was quite delighted when Will Barrett described this poem as ‘very, very silly.’ I really enjoy picking words for their sounds rather than their meaning and whether or not they make sense – I like to be surprised by what turns up unsummoned. In this poem I think the door came first then Ms Gabor quickly showed up with her family. I can’t remember how Sylvia Plath got involved but I suspect that it was because she rhymes with bath (at least she does in Cumbria).’