writer | teacher | coach
I've been helping teach an after-school poetry class for teens, and one of the assignments was a "found" poem composed of song lyrics from artists each student chose. Students were also tasked with choosing from a long list of provided themes to focus their writing, and to come up with a picture (drawn or nabbed from the internet) to accompany their poems.
MAURA SANDERS was lying in a hospital bed waiting to die. At 24, she couldn't imagine a more terrible fate, but if she was honest with herself, she couldn't really imagine a better one either.
THE AERONAUTS has been described as "GRAVITY meets FREE SOLO," and though I haven't seen the latter, this seems to be a reasonable comparison. There's drama, love and loss, realism and historical significance, female empowerment and the championing of the underdog archetype, and just straight-up adventure, which I found highly entertaining.
Limericks, as you likely know, are generally humorous, and the subject here is not. While this structure may seem like an odd choice for this poem, I think the rhythm and rhyme of it add to the tale, and perhaps the chaos of the main character's situation.
Although Courtney's been signed to Virgin/Capitol Records, he has the indie-alternative past to fuel good, original music.
