A friend & I are currently doing a trial run for a project we’d like to deliver early next year. This means we are each writing a poem a day (supposedly for all of September, but we’ll see how dry the well gets).  It’s similar to a NaPoWrMo — but a theme has been selected & each poem is an exploration of that theme. We intend to invite other poets, set tasks, & look to publish the best of, etc etc. But I digress.

Six days in, it’s exciting but definitely a very challenging task.

Naturally, given that I have a daily deadline & a set topic — I’m finding all sorts of reasons to write those other poems — NOT AT ALL RELATED TO THE POSSIBLE FUTURE PROJECT TEST RUN!!!! — which have been inside for a few months … or are discovered as I research topics only tangentially related to the topic (if at all).

This is good for those BONUS poems (I must be producing 3  for every 1 project poem each day, & fragments / sketches of others). So it’s nice to have a lot of new first drafts under my belt. [Seriously the application of a curfew makes the fun you have after it has expired soooo much more wonderful!]  But I hope the designated topic starts turning up some gems soon.

This is one of those offcuts. I don’t actually need to say much more about it, as the poem is a little too self-explanatory (hey it’s only a draft) & will tell its story walkin’. The title, sadly, I think is my favourite part 🙂  But it is, at the very least, a quirky piece of information – definitely worth the share.  Thoughts/comments always appreciated.

Johannes Goropius Becanus’s Brabantic Obsession

was it:

hubris, naiveté or desperation to be near
a god that patiently does not exist, or at the last
doesn’t actually care enough to intervene

which led 16th century Dutch amateur linguist
Johannes Goropius Becanus to prove
Brabantic was the language spoken in Paradise?

his key theory:

the world’s original language must be its simplest
& given innocent Brabantic has more short words than
Latin, Greek, & Hebrew — viz. it’s older than all three!

corollary theories:

all languages have bitten from the Brabantic tree
Egyptian hieroglyphics represent Brabantic
Eden was located (you guessed it) in the Brabant

oh — did I mention Brabantic was the language
spoken between the Scheldt & Meuse Rivers
in Holland, the region right where Goropius lived?

IKR, coincidence or what!

*****

Tree of Knowledge by The-Fairywitch