How do you view your co-workers? In the maelstrom of the working day, are they friends, irritances, the grumpy boss, the techie boy who only talks to computers, or just the girl in the office who answers the phone? Do they have a cultural life? Do they think you have one?
Sometimes, an event happens that makes you think differently about people and shakes you out of your comfortable little world where everyone has their office role. Like last Thursday, 14 April – or Poem in Your Pocket Day, to be exact. If you haven’t heard of it before, the idea is to carry a favourite poem with you to share with co-workers, family, and friends. ‘Co-workers,’ I hear you mutter as you look round at them. ‘Do they even know what a poem is?’ Well, they might just surprise you! The first person to start it off in my workplace was someone I know is a keen poet, so it wasn’t really a surprise. She emailed a poem that was lovely, new to me and I enjoyed reading it, and I thought that would be the end of it. But then someone else sent one round. And then someone else after that. And another. Including the techie boy and the office girl. The mix of poems was eclectic and beautiful; poets ancient and modern, local, national and international. Soon almost everyone joined in and we had a veritable poetry avalanche. We even talked about them and shared ideas and links! I was amazed and delighted and I do now look at my co-workers with a different eye. I’d never imagined that the elderly academic in the corner was a Clash fan back in the 70s, who has never lost their love for punk poetry. Or that the seemingly hard-headed businessman is a sucker for the Romantics. My workplace now has a little buzz going, and is all the better for it. I can’t wait to see next year’s poems.
What poem did I send round? John Cooper Clarke’s Haiku. What, not his best known number, you cry? No, I’m too Evidently Chickentown for that - I need this job to pay the bills!
1 comment:
This is so true - it is very hard to imagine the interior life of your colleagues - don't they just exist to give you more work to do? Well, I support any movement that tries to make you feel less like a drone in the workplace.
The poem I can't get out of my head at the moment is an extract from The Princess by Tennyson. It's "Now sleeps the crimson petal..." - of course the adaptation of the novel "The Crimson Petal and The White" was on telly the other day. Romola Garai, playing Sugar, read the poem - it was so beautiful, so evocative of a garden at dusk and rather erotic. I'll have to have a go at reading the whole of The Princess now. Anyway, that's what I would share.
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