Each dawn I wake, to stitch the soft petal pink sky,
slither a gentle golden thread through the familiar wine-dark sea
where the sunlight catches it
Each day I bring a world to life.
And each night I destroy it.
I tear through trees, fray faces, leave whirlpools unspun,
rip apart lotus flowers, unwind rivers, and unpick the sun
Leaving my fingers tender and rosy with scars
Leaving threads splayed out in shades of solitude
Leaving myself looped in lost time
But keeping the suitors at bay.
Resourceful is what they will call Odysseus.
He endured great pain they will say.
I am the silken moth embroidered in a cocoon.
Bright-eyed Athena looms over me
But she won’t tell me what I want to know
About the man who is a stranger to our son
And so my answer is the empty sea
I don’t know if I will recognise you if you return.
Or maybe you won’t recognise me,
My ox-eyes dim, turning from the sun
and madness bursting at my seams —
I have become too accustomed to dusk and destruction.
Poet's Note
In Homer’s Odyssey, we hear extensive detail about the epic adventures of Odysseus and his return home after the Trojan War, but we hear much less from his wife Penelope.
Waiting twenty years for him in Ithaca, Penelope raised their son Telemachus, looked after the household, and fended off many suitors who vied for her hand in marriage. She did this by insisting they wait until she had finished weaving a shroud, which she would unravel each night so that it was never complete. The first stanzas of my poem directly describe this process, and I have tried to include lots of textile-related imagery throughout the poem, such as the ‘embroidered cocoon’.
In the Odyssey and the Iliad, Homer uses many epithets, which are short stock phrases used to describe things. These were easy to remember when the poem was originally performed out loud and fitted the epic meter - dactylic hexameter - used by Homer where a stressed syllable is followed by two unstressed syllables. I wanted to preserve some of these in my poem, including the ‘wine dark sea’, ‘bright-eyed Athena’, and ‘ox-eyed’, which is a general prefix for describing various women. I have also indirectly referenced ‘rosy-fingered dawn’, which is the pretty way that Homer indicates a new day has begun.
I study English at university and therefore always read classical texts in translation. For fellow non-Greek readers, I would recommend Emily Wilson’s translation of the Odyssey, which is easy to understand and includes thought-provoking explanatory notes at the start.
One thing that I have found particularly interesting in my degree is how texts like Homer's Odyssey have had such a huge impact on some of the major works of English literature, from Milton to Shakespeare to Keats. Reading classical texts can open up new understandings of modern literature.
I also really enjoy reading modern retellings of classical stories. I first became interested in classical mythology through reading the books of Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson series) and Kate O'Hearn (Pegasus, Titans, and Valkyrie series), which make the classical world accessible by tying it to the modern day. If you are new to Greek myth, these texts are a great place to start!
Yasmin is a second-year student studying English at the University of Bristol. She believes that an important part of keeping the classical past alive is making it accessible and engaging for modern readers.