The Tuesday Poem

The poem this week at Tuesday Poem is "Bad Housekeeping" by Emma Neale from Dunedin.

Andrew M. Bell is the editor of Tuesday Poem this week and he says of his choice:

"I was immediately struck by how the tone of the poem was, at once, both compassionate and playful. The title is well-chosen, a wry self-chastisement by the poet that implies that the mouse is present in her house through some fault of her own, some failing of her domestic standards. Also implicit in the title is the feminist counter-punch, a sly dig at the patriarchal ideal of the perfect homemaker.

The poem itself is a vivid portrait of a cat bringing a mouse into the house, one which many readers themselves would have experienced. Emma perfectly captures the callous indifference the cat shows in its protracted playing with the mouse before the inevitable kill. She beautifully counterpoints this with the abject terror of the mouse.

I love the way Emma has skilfully woven echoes of Beatrix Potter and Hans Christian Andersen through the poem with phrases like "her minikin eyes" and "as if she is a Thumbelina-Cinderella". This seems to lend the poem a dark underpinning such as that often found in fairy tales.

The poem is brimming with startling images that grab the reader's attention such as the depiction of the tossed mouse as "a dainty stunned spool of nerves and blood" whose heart "beats fast as an edge-flipped coin". With her poet's skill, Emma has taken a domestic incident to which many people would not give a second thought and imbued it with drama and humour. In doing so, she has created a folk tale of her own.

And, in our heart of hearts, we all love a happy ending."