She shuts her mouth and dresses like a brown wren.[1]This villanelle was written during the DRAW (Departing Radically in Academic Writing) Summer School held in December 2025 in response to a workshop delivered by Dr Mellie Green on using the technique … Continue reading
She tries to lift her wings, but alas, they are tightly pinned inside a butterfly box,
“I think,” she whispers, “therefore I am not—again.”
She imagines stars waltzing above her, writing with a purple inked fountain pen,
When arbitrary blackness gallops in and checks the locks:
She shuts her mouth and dresses like a brown wren.
She fell into a dream then where Sylvia said, “Jot yourself down on this throne with me and together we shall reign!”
And sung her moon-struck, and kissed her quite insane on the bridge between the winter solstice and the summer equinox,
“I feel,” she whispers, “therefore I am—once again.”
Without warning Sylvia toppled from the sky, an arrow lodged deep into her hearts vein.
Enter seraphim and Professor von X’s men in frocks:
She shuts her mouth and dresses like a brown wren.
She lay there and fancied Sylvia would return to dance with her in the summer rain,
But she felt herself growing old and knew she would soon lay her memory down in the doc(k)s.
“I think,” she whispers, “therefore I am not—again.”
She sighs heavily into the dark—she should have loved a philosopher (not a poet) whose name was Ken, Sven or, even that Cartesian fiend Ren.
But she knows she’d never bow that low because nothing kills the soul quite like orthodox.
She shuts her mouth and dresses like a brown wren.
“I think,” she whispers, “therefore I am not—again.”
“I cannot life for life itself: but for the words which stay the flux” — Sylvia Plath[2]Plath, S. (2000). The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, Anchor Books, p. 286.
Troglodytes aedon
References
| ↑1 | This villanelle was written during the DRAW (Departing Radically in Academic Writing) Summer School held in December 2025 in response to a workshop delivered by Dr Mellie Green on using the technique of palimpsest in our publication work. Palimpsest writing is a process in which a new text is written over an earlier one, while allowing traces of the original to remain visible—conceptually, structurally, or thematically. Rather than erasing the prior text, the writer engages with it, creating layered meanings where past and present voices coexist. In contemporary writing, this often functions as a metaphorical practice, used to explore memory, history, trauma, or revision by letting earlier narratives “ghost” the new work. Mellie invited us to take an example of writing in a genre and style by an author we admire and try the technique ourselves. I chose Sylvia Plath’s villanelle “Mad girl’s love song”—a piece I adore for so many reasons. It is at once wish and warning, an expression of anxiety about female subjectivities, and a juxtaposition of control and breakdown. I’ve emphasised the lines I retained from Sylvia’s villanelle in bold. The feelings described in “Brown Wren” are similar to hers, though here the theme is reflecting on her love of academic writing and work—only to realise it was just a fool’s romantic dream. |
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| ↑2 | Plath, S. (2000). The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, Anchor Books, p. 286. |