Each day of March during the Slice of Life Challenge, I’m celebrating living poets by using their work to create new poems from existing lines. How fitting that today’s poet wrote The Orange – – just like a slicing logo! Her name is Wendy Cope, and she is from Great Britain. Her title poem was born from a simple moment with friends and has become a world favorite. In her story below, which describes how she came to write the poem, it reminds me of Frank O’Hara’s famous lunch poems. She is the UK female parallel to his New York City male perspective of capturing the simple moments.
Wendy Cope shares here about how she came to write The Orange, and also here.
In Orbit
We looked up at the stars
both in a spin with nowhere to spin to
I can’t sleep at night.
I can’t forgive you.
I want to do it anyway
But it could take a while.
Taken from: Song; 9-Line Triolet; I Worry; Defining the Problem; Seeing You; Men Talking.
Common Threads 