Monday 2 October 2017

New Forms (25): The Golden Shovel


This not-quite golden (?peat) shovel is displayed in the Somerset Levels, 
having come from the China Clay Museum in Cornwall



24 November 2017 news update: there is now an international Golden Shovel competition run by Roosevelt University for young people and international undergraduate students: details here

* * *

I attended a poetry workshop and reading at the ¡Cornucopia! Alde Valley Festival on Saturday. One of the poems read out to us by Sue Wallace-Shaddad was in the Golden Shovel form. This was new to me. Its name immediately brought to mind not only Wordsworth's 'host of golden daffodils', but a diverse array of other 'golden' items, rules and concepts - the goose's golden eggs, the Golden Section, a golden handshake and so on.

The image that lodged most firmly in my mind was the 'Golden Marshalltown' trowel, the prized possession of an archaeologist, in The Golden Marshalltown: A Parable of the the Archaeology of the 1980s by Kent V. Flannery (American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 84, No. 2, June, 1982, 265-278): you can read about the article here

I am still trying to work out the connection between the trowel and the shovel since both (like the pen: remember Heaney) can be used for digging.

Here are a few links to websites about the new poetry form...

No comments: