Draft 71: Headlines, with Spoils

Perhaps I may have been a bit dismissive when reading Du Plessis’s poem Draft 71: Headlines, with Spoils. On a surface level, I found it difficult to immerse myself into the poem, due to the incoherent and serious imagery that was presented. The way it was structured and the format of the essay also disengaged me compared to the traditional style I’m so accustom too.

            After dissecting the poem in class, I respect the different approach to poetry. The use of recycling text (found poetry) is a clever way to manipulate language and in terms of eco poetry provides a different stance and evokes the reader to assess their environmental surroundings. Aesthetically Plessis makes a statement with the use of taking critical phrases from articles and highlighting it in bold. Distracting the reader at first gaze, her methodology obviously mocks the media rhetoric. Something I realised through this method was that perhaps she was commenting on our transparency regarding the articles we read everyday.

            We read articles that catch our attention, we ‘umm’ and ‘ahh’ about the issues raised but we never seem to get around to actually doing something about it. In this specific case, the articles in the previous months about the torrential rain and flooding was something that caught Englands attention, but now the spring days have dawned it seems less of a problem and here we come back to this cycle. In about 10 months time (or less) we will see the return of serious articles about how the climate change will cause global warfare but as Plessis states in her poem we will remain to ‘eat the sugared salt’.