The Cat on the Grammar Mat
Some rules are made to be broken, and Penny broke them all!
Dear fellow writer,
Recently I was asked to say a few words at a poetry reading in memory of a former student who died earlier this year.
I first met Penny back in 2006, when she planted herself in the front row of "Poetry off the Page," an experimental literature course that I was co-teaching with my colleague Michele Leggott. Penny was smart, sassy, funny, fearless, creative, questioning, collaborative — in short, the ideal student.
Penny turned 70 years old that year.
That was before she started performing her poetry in public, her snow-white hair ceremoniously sprayed with streaks of pink or purple or blue. It was well before she established herself as a popular open-mic Master of Ceremonies at the Thirsty Dog pub on seedy Karangahape Road. And it was nearly a decade before she published her first book of poetry, one year shy of her eightieth birthday.
One audacious adventure at a time, Penny became my model for the kind of poet (and person) that I want to be when I grow up.
And her poems were hilarious! Here's one of my favorites, complete with Penny's original salty language and gender-confused feline:
On Making Sure That Your Subject and Your Verb are Close Together and Your Object Is As Near to the Left Hand Side of Your Sentence as Possible
(with a nod to Sam Leith, author of Write to the Point: A Master Class on the Fundamentals of Writing for Any Purpose)
The cat, a black half Burmese half unknown roistering tom from the neighbourhood, chewing and munching on a dead mouse but leaving the head and tail on the Persian rug I had bought in Iran, eyeing me as I looked at her from my position lying on the sofa after eating too much lunch and drinking two glasses of wine, which I never do these days today being an exception, sat, if you can call it sitting when in fact one leg was lifted in the air as she cleaned her bottom impervious to the disgusted gaze of my visitor who works in a sexual health clinic and finds the fact that cats and dogs clean their bottoms with their tongues very unhygienic to observe in a domestic situation, on the mat.
Even a stickler for syntax like me — yes, I do generally believe that subjects and verbs should hang out close together, but I also appreciate creative deviations from the rule — can't help but appreciate Penny's sense of humor, her colorful streaks of irreverence sprayed on the white hair of convention.
Rest in peace, Penny Somervaille. We miss you!
It means so much to me to hear back from my readers. Please leave a comment, share this post with a friend, drop me a restack — or at least toss a heart to Penny, wherever she may be now.
Kia pai tō koutou rā (have a great day) – and keep on writing!
Helen
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Books on writing by Helen Sword
Writing with Pleasure
Princeton University Press, 2023
Air & Light & Time & Space: How Successful Academics Write
Harvard University Press, 2017
Stylish Academic Writing
Harvard University Press, 2012
The Writer’s Diet: A Guide to Fit Prose
University of Chicago Press, 2016
