{"id":572,"date":"2025-10-25T22:12:23","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T21:12:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/?p=572"},"modified":"2025-10-25T22:13:44","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T21:13:44","slug":"play-as-disruption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/25\/play-as-disruption\/","title":{"rendered":"Play as Disruption"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"\/<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Bear with me. I\u2019m testing out a new approach, partly so that Share Your Toys, going forward, exactly synchs up with my Substack, Stray Bulletin<\/a>. Social media being what it is, I don\u2019t expect Substack to last (this blog was itself once a Tumblr), but it’s currently the place to connect with a slightly wider audience. So the aim is to post there, backing everything up as I go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I started Stray Bulletin I tried to fully embrace Substack\u2019s \u2018newsletter\u2019 model, structuring each post as a multi-item column reporting on developments across the board. It\u2019s a fun way of documenting things, but very hard to keep it up, as you might have gathered from how much I tried to stuff into the multi-part ‘I goon-march …’ post. Easier, from this point, I think \u2014 I hope! \u2014 to post about one or two things at a time and sort the posts into categories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It might not work. But let\u2019s give it a try. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For National Poetry Day on the 2nd of this month, the Poetry Society asked me to put together a resource on the theme of \u2018Play\u2019, using two poems that had won prizes in National Poetry Competitions of past years. You can access it here<\/a>. It discusses the poems in questions, poses questions for further classroom discussion, and suggests several writing exercises based on them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I chose to write about \u2018The Crab Man\u2019 by Eliot North and \u2018Don\u2019t Put your Daughter into Space, Mrs. Kirk\u2019 by Valerie Laws, two very different, enjoyably juicy pieces. Before I get into either of them, though, the theme itself needs addressing:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Play \u2013 the theme of this year\u2019s National Poetry Day \u2013 tends to be associated with lightness. We sometimes describe a poem or poetry collection as \u2018playful\u2019 by way of reassuring the audience that the poet has no particular drum to beat, no designs on their readers, no dark secrets. But there\u2019s something a little bit dishonest about this. Play, after all, is fundamentally disruptive \u2013 that\u2019s why it\u2019s so often confined, spatially and temporally, to sandboxes, games and \u2018playtime\u2019 , where a limit can be placed on its effects. We treat it in this way \u2013 almost as a volatile substance \u2013 because we know meaningful play is a process of discovery that breaks and reshapes boundaries, including those we\u2019ve grown fond of, those we rely upon.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This is by way of excusing the fact that part of the reason I was drawn to \u2018The Crab Man\u2019 was the hope that it might be about a half-man, half-crab. It isn\u2019t \u2014 not on its surface anyway. But why not try to make this interpretation work?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a poem made out of tight, cautious steps \u2014 its spare couplets creep ever closer to the figure of its title, who is made more frightening by the capitalised article (not \u2018the Crab Man\u2019 but \u2018The Crab Man\u2019, like \u2018The King\u2019). Whoever is being addressed by the speaker of the poem is headed toward some kind of confrontation with him. And while various contextual clues enable us to recognise The Crab Man as one who breaks open the shells of crabs to remove and sort the meat \u2013 a normal enough job \u2013 the door is left just wide enough for us to imagine him as a kind of mutant. His \u2018red robes\u2019 are reminiscent of the rusty or scarlet plating of various crab species, and his cleaver, \u2018Smashed over and over\u2019, could be a giant crushing claw. The \u2018chainmail door\u2019 and \u2018swish of metal skirts\u2019 obviously refer to the chain fly screen at a seafood processing plant. But then again, what about a curtain of silver sea, the light glinting off it metallically, closing around a person and over their head?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll leave you to explore the rest via the link above.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bear with me. I\u2019m testing out a new approach, partly so that Share Your Toys, going forward, exactly synchs up with my Substack, Stray Bulletin. Social media being what it is, I don\u2019t expect Substack to last (this blog was itself once a Tumblr), but it’s currently the place to connect with a slightly wider audience. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[338],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=572"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":575,"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572\/revisions\/575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}