Poetry

“Shepherd Girl” is Complete

| Forgotten Fields

The ballad inspired by my mother’s childhood shepherding days is complete! Though I yet reel from the achievement and bask in the joy of it, I am eager to begin work on the Afrikaans adaptation. Already, I have some lines roughly worked out and a title for it: “Skaapwagtertjie”1 (“[little] sheep-keeper”). Incidentally, the non-diminutive form—“skaapwagter”—is the common Afrikaans name for the Wheatear songbird (Oenanthe oenanthe).

Poetry Publication Progress (2020-05-04)

  1. [skaahp-vuKG-teR-ki] Pronounced as one word, with the [u] in “up”, the guttural [KG] in the Scottish “loch”, a trilled [R] and the [i] in “in”.

Composing “Shepherd Girl”: Three Versions

| Forgotten Fields

I now have three versions of the “Shepherd Girl” poem from which I must choose one as the final composition. They are similar in most respects except for stanza two, which concerns how my mother passed the time whilst sheep watching. The dilemma: which pastime is most apt?

Another decision I must make concerns a line in stanza three: do I choose the figurative version, which allows for good onomatopoeia but poor fluidity, or the literal version, which allows for better flow but little lyrical effect—alliterative, onomatopoeic or otherwise? I cannot decide!

Composing “Shepherd Girl”

| Forgotten Fields

“Shepherd Girl” is developing beautifully. Three of the four stanzas have their variations reduced to one or two preliminary versions for the final draft; only the second stanza has yet to be brought to that point, with about nine variations under consideration.

I spent much of the week on those variations, attempting to weed out the least workable among them; but, with every one I eliminated, several more would spring up! From more than twenty options, I have now set apart nine from which I must extract one.

It sounds complicated, but the poem is a simple ballad with short lines. The challenge is finding the right details to cast in verse—those that best capture the subject and theme (a biographical glimpse into my mother’s youth—its innocence, hardship and beauty).