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The Poetry Course
By Frances Gapper
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Given the amount of time Brantley had been down the hole, it was amazing his
single, lidless eye could still focus.
Well it wasn't really a hole. Once you got through the entrance tunnel it was
more of a lair. With big rooms, some carpeted and furnished, others never used.
A suitable residence for the last of the dragons, which Brantley sort of was,
although after centuries of interbreeding he didn't look much like a dragon,
more (but still not very) like a human being.
It was home, but gloomy. To save electricity, Brantley kept the lights and the
fridge switched off. His computer was powered by wind energy - a small turbine
in the overgrown garden, only just visible to passers-by.
Brantley was waiting to hear from the Arval Foundation. He'd applied in January
for a place on a course in Advanced Poetry and now it was June, only a month
till the course. Perhaps he should just assume his application had been
successful. He'd sent ten pages of his epic poem about Griffin Drake, his uncle,
and a writing history of twenty pages, describing his own years of struggle, the
creative blocks, the rejections by publishers. He'd considered editing it down,
but had decided not to.
Two things in particular were now worrying Brantley: (1) he snored, as do all
dragons, and he might have to share a room, according to the brochure; (2) the
course tutors were Osmund Scarlet and Nina Horner. Brantley might say Oswald by
mistake and then Osmund might be offended. Well at least Nina was an easy name
to remember. She wrote sonnets and villanelles, about canaries, bats and
nightingales. Brantley preferred runic verse, if he was honest.
But an Arval course! People's lives were transformed by going on Arval courses.
The tutors recommended their work to agents. They became part of the literary
world. And so might he, why not? A dragon writing dragonlit. Splendid for
blurbs.
Thinking that the post must have come by now Brantley put on a wide-brimmed hat
with a gauze veil, to protect his eye from insects and specks of dirt, and went
to check the box.
It was terribly bright outside.
The box was empty. No confirmation letter from Arval. No books from
Boudicca.co.uk. Nothing.
Brantley felt depressed and lonely. He decided on impulse to ring the Arval
centre.
He collected the brochure from his bedside
table. Then with all the details to paw, he tapped in the number.
"Excuse me. I'm very sorry to bother you. But..."
The calm administrator asked his name and said she would look at the database.
Seconds later: "No, you're not on the course," she said. "You
haven't been chosen. But you're on the reserve list."
"Thank you very much," said Brantley, and put down the phone. He sat
stunned. Then a tear fell from his eye.
Not chosen. Reserve list, what did that mean? Hanging around waiting and being
humbly available, in case someone dropped out. Faint hope.
The phone rang. But it wasn't the administrator ringing to say she'd made a
mistake. It was Aunt Julia.
"Hello," sobbed Brantley. "Yes, very well thank you, Aunt Julia.
How are you?"
Aunt Julia was only a dragon by marriage—she'd been Uncle Griffin's eighteenth
and last wife. He'd left her a very nice lair, fully furnished and heaped with
jewels. Brantley didn't grudge her one single garnet or bit of rose quartz.
Uncle Griffin couldn't have been easy to live with: he'd hatched in a bad
temper, which hadn't improved over the next thousand years or so. He'd also been
something of a Bluebeard. One room still remained locked, its key hanging in the
kitchen cupboard. Aunt Julia's incurious temperament, plus her philosophy of
'Let sleeping or possibly dead dragons lie,' had promoted household harmony
during Uncle Griffin's lifetime, while enabling her to survive into widowhood.
"Brantley, what's wrong? Is it that back incisor?"
"No, but. Well. Oh Aunt Julia..." It all came pouring out.
"Who are these people?" she boomed. "I've never heard of
them." Aunt Julia didn't read poetry so this wasn't really surprising, but
it made him feel slightly better.
"Look here, Brantley. They obviously realised they couldn't teach you
anything. Because you're a much more Advanced Poet than they are. You're in a
higher league altogether."
"I don't think so, Aunt Julia." Sniff. "But thank you."
"Griffin always used to say how good you were. And he ran a flying
school!"
Brantley slept well that night and woke resolved. He emailed the Arval centre to
let them know his decision and asked them to send back his deposit cheque.
Then he sat on a tree stump in the garden, watching the seeds blowing down from
the wych elm in their little round paper cases. Remembering a riddle popular in
the Drake family: I have a single, lidless eye. Who am I?
London, the riddle-solver might say, or a lighthouse. Those were both good
answers.
The postman came by, whistling - "Morning Mr. Drake." Brantley said
hello. He watched the seeds, the clouds, a beetle in the grass. His mind went
still and then he thought of a new verse for his epic poem. It just came to him,
without any effort, like a flower unfolding its petals in the light.
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Frances Gapper lives on a very isolated, bleak
moor, euphemistically described by tourist guides as England's Last Wilderness.
She now only communicates by email and semaphore. Her short story collection Absent
Kisses is advertised on the Amazon.co.uk website as being 'In superb
condition - unread' and 'Unwanted Gift - never read'. She has no useful advice
to offer.
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