"I’m eleven not seven..."

Hi again

Thought I would share something from my very early days as poet. This is not my first poem I wrote, probably about the third one that I can recall. I would have been 14 at the time. I will say though that my very first poem I wrote was when I was 11 and I was standing in front of my mother’s full length mirror dressed up in some of her best clothes (she was out for the day). So while I posed and pouted I created this little gem!

“I’m eleven not seven.
I want to be groovy
Maybe star in a movie!”

God bless me, how cute. Maybe how precocious!
The second poem began “I hit my head against the sun and fell onto the moon”. Sadly I don’t have rest of it but it followed something about travelling through space to planet X. I know my school friend showed to our English teacher who was surprised that it was me who had written it. I was always the quiet kid that did so-so at school but hid out of sight mostly.
But my third piece follows as a photocopy of the original. My best friend at school, Julie kept it! I was so thrilled when she told me she had it and she sent me a copy. I hope you get a laugh out of this as I did when I re-read it.
It looks a mess, which I think is half the fun of it. The entire letter is stamped with my parents signature ink stamp and then I have also written over it in large texta. My family had moved to England for 12 months and instead of doing my homework I wrote Julie a letter which you can tell hardly contains any news but is just sheer nonsense with some reference to Monty Python. I must have been watching an episode previously. I cracked up when I read it, brought back some happy memories where Julie and I would play gumbies at school ( a Monty Python reference there) by bringing to school one of our fathers’ handkerchiefs and knotting the corners of these before placing on our heads and just goofing off. That year was 1973. The year I wrote this page of silliness was 1974.
You get 2 pages of this, sadly not the one with the Monty Python reference.
Enjoy, “A Very Dramatic Poem” and “Dear Maria”. Hopefully you can read them through the nonsense mind of a 14 year old girl.