BBC Breakfast Poem - Rondeau Redouble for 2012

So, the BBC phone me up

“Hi Mike, I’m a producer for BBC Breakfast programme and we’d like you to write a review poem for 2012 to be broadcast on New Years Eve”

I’d been on BBC Breakfast before but never performed a poem live on air.

I had 8 days to write it.  Then i procrastinated and i had 5 days.  Then they asked me if i could get it in for the 30th so i had 4 days.

I am sick to death of crap advert poems – you’ve seen them, Macdonalds have done one but the most offensive is the one for the Scum, I mean the Sun.  So i decided to challenge myself.  I decided to go all technical and attempt a Rondeau Redouble.  I do like working with form and love playing with sonnets, Haiku, Found and Rondeau and this is where i advise students to start.  I work with 10,000 young people per year and my advice to those poets starting out is to use “form”.  Start with Haiku then chose whichever style you like the most and use it to practise writing poems

Definition:

A Rondeau Redouble has only two rhymes and is written in five stanzas of four lines each and one of five lines. Each of the first four lines of stanza 1 get individually repeated in the fourth lines of stanzas 2, 3, 4, & 5; and the first part of the first line is repeated as a short fifth line to conclude the sixth stanza. This can be represented as – A1,B1,A2,B2 – b,a,b,A.  Also, each line has 10 syllables.

That’s simple enough isn’t it.

It is difficult to capture the whole of the year in 1 minute 45 seconds but i had a go.  At one stage it was very sport heavy, i even mentioned Manchester City and Chelsea because of their achievements but then rewrote it.

Like I said on the programme, in the poem i have played with “Time” and 

the poem is ultimately about reflecting and looking back and the way memory can speed events up or slow things down.  I like to use poems as a vehicle to look very closely at things and examine them closely.  And as time is our most precious commodity, i thought it was worth my attention &  a good “geek out” on - 

Thanks for all the kind words and tweets & never forget, God is a Manc.

Happy NEW year and here’s the poem

 

Rondeau Redouble for 2012

 

Time’s like a beating heart or blinking eye

Minutes become weeks, seconds become days

Hearts take a quantum leap the way time flies

Warm rays of sun amidst cool falling rain

 

Lets dig and delve through 2012 today

Reflect on this great year be filled with pride

As games and flames and names slow fade away

Time’s like a beating heart or blinking eye

 

See Nicola and Jess beam golden smiles

Watch Weir & Wiggins winning wheeling ways

Mo in slow motion bring the past alive

Minutes become weeks, seconds become days

 

The Arab spring Obama and Plebgate

Betty, Bond and Felix fell from the sky

Slow resurrections down on white hart lane

Hearts take a quantum leap the way time flies

 

Jubilee Celebrations drenched with pride

60 years 24 hours a day

The toughest job but on this woman strives

Warm rays of sun amidst cool falling rain

 

Less we forget lost loved ones passing lives

Those who toil to keep the innocent safe

For those who work through tragedy and smile

They are the pulse that keeps this nation great

Like a beating heart