{"id":759,"date":"2010-07-30T13:19:00","date_gmt":"2010-07-30T13:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=759"},"modified":"2010-07-30T13:19:00","modified_gmt":"2010-07-30T13:19:00","slug":"helen-mort-is-carrying-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/helen-mort-is-carrying-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Helen Mort is carrying on"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Lovesick<\/span>

Written in response to the Carry On film 'Follow That Camel!'<\/span>

We're just like Bo and Nocker in a 1960s film; two mugs <\/span>
drawn in by something like a belly-dancer's tasselled hips, <\/span>
kidnapped the day we pause to shake out shoes <\/span>
and underwear (the desert sand gets everywhere).<\/span>

Watch: in a blink, our efforts melt to farce <\/span>
and inexplicably, we're naked, clutching shells, <\/span>
or improvising combat with a cricket bat. <\/span>
We're a sandcastle-building contest gone to pot \u2013 <\/span>

the tragedy is less the palaces knocked down,<\/span>
more the earnestness we built them with. <\/span>
No matter if the set's a beach in Camber Sands, <\/span>
the dunes still tipped with snow, we strip sincerely <\/span>

in the Sussex afternoon and throw our teatowels <\/span>
to the wind. It's love, we say, this carrying on.<\/span>
We must not think beyond the final, scripted scene.<\/span>


*Helen Mort<\/a><\/span> has published two pamphlets with tall-lighthouse press, the most recent – A Pint for the Ghost<\/a> <\/span>– was a Poetry Book Society Choice for Spring 2010. She is currently Poet in Residence at The Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The LovesickWritten in response to the Carry On film 'Follow That Camel!'We're just like Bo and Nocker in a 1960s film; two mugs drawn in by something like a belly-dancer's tasselled hips, kidnapped the day we pause to shake out shoes and underwear (the desert sand gets everywhere).Watch: in a blink, our efforts melt to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}