Effanineffable Name

This brief explanation of my pseudonym, dating from March 2012, first appeared on the storytelling site Cowbird, where I discovered many wonderful personal stories and even shared some of my own.  The title is taken from Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot (which goes to show that even the most serious poet has a fun side).

Marina Sofia is not the name I was born with. It was the name I wanted to give to my daughter. ‘Marina’ I associated with the sea, with boats, with feeling the wind in your hair and daring to sail forth and explore. I wanted my daughter to be a fearless pirate. ‘Sofia’ of course is wisdom. I wanted my daughter to be curious, informed, fair, learning from people and from experience.

So I waited.

And then I had a son. So I kept the name for my second child. And then he was a son too. So I learnt to love boys. I put the name up on a high shelf, out of sight.

But then, a few weeks ago, a wonderful thing happened. After many years of silence, a creative person inside of me started to break out. She was me and yet not me, she needed a different name. So I took a stepladder, picked up the name from the shelf, dusted it with one swift puff of breath.

And now it is so my own, I cannot imagine being without it anymore.

Erasure Poetry Experiment

Over at dVerse Poets Pub the poetic form for experimenting with today is erasure poetry. Here is what Anna Montgomery has to say about it:

Erasure poetry is a form of found poetry created by erasing words from an existing text in prose or verse and framing the result on the page as a poem. The results can be allowed to stand in situ or they can be arranged into lines and/or stanzas.

So here is my attempt at it, based on a poem I recently wrote about my name and how it looks on paper. Just about half of the words have been erased and I am amazed by how much tighter my poem now feels.  Maybe that’s the way to go!

I hated my name as a child.

I craved glamour – Esmeralda was my weapon of choice.

Not this    unruly.

A name dully     mushroomed to earth.

Sinuous paths circled     upholstered the cushions

the public face    gentled

yet snake-sliver too     less savoury worlds.

Is there a letter missing?

No

no jagged lines to cut flab

just something     scattered

fields far from home.