Untitled 3/5/10 - Martin Collins

We would go to stately homes and grand summer houses
in whichever country, whenever the opportunity. Wander
through more rooms than you could ever need. Marvel
at all the fountains, fixtures and furniture
decorated in decadent details.
It always made me want to vomit.
Someone owning such grand structures for mere months
while generations of families huddle together
in tiny terraced houses.
Regardless
there is still some part of me
that would like, in later life,
to take tea in the drawing room
and as light streams through
impossibly large curtains,
act like it was worth it in the end
-M. Collins 3/5/2010

Of the poems I wrote at the workshop, this is my favourite which has been slightly edited since then. The exercise had been to think of a place that we wanted to be with Sebastian Barker's 'In the Heart of Hackney' as an example to inspire us. I'm really struggling with a title though, all I can think of now is 'The loathsome frivolity of the larger home.' however that warns the reader what my opinion is and I want the line "It always made me want to vomit." to be unexpected. It certainly elicited the desired surprise and laughter from the other people at the workshop without such a title.

One thing I noticed about my writing after doing a number of exercises in a row is that I have a penchant for taking the first person and being very autobiographical. It not only makes me worry about my own self-absorption but that I may be misinterpreted when I write something that isn't about me in the first person. Perhaps I'm worried that I have written about myself and just don't want to accept it? Ho-hum.