#399: The Car Poem
Writing and driving, and writing about driving
I have renegotiated my relationship with objects many times over the last six years. I have moved home twice. I have purged my wardrobe after relationships have ended. I have emptied my cupboards of perishable foods before escaping the loneliness of lockdown. I have bought the most expensive object I have ever owned — a car — and frankly have never written about it because it is wild to me that it is mine.
So, would it make a fitting final object? Should I write about the car that is the single object that has most transformed my life since this blog first began?
Well, I have been doing that already.
Outside of this blog, I write poetry. And if you asked me what my poems are about, more often than not the answer is driving. My poems talk of learning to drive, about journeys through tunnels, and about being behind a wheel and looking straight into the sun. I suppose at least I have a theme. I am not a war poet or a love poet or a chronicler of our times, but Eleanor Scorah, Poet of the Ford Fiesta.
In part, I think it’s the proximity. I write about my car because I use it nearly every day of my life. And when I use it, my brain and body are exercised in different ways. When driving alone, there is room for reflection, for ideas, for inspiration. My brain makes space for the ingredients of writing.
It is a fortunate thing to own a car. I used to rely on buses, and though the liminal space of public transport gave me time to actually write, rather than simply to think about writing, it did not always get me where I needed to go, and it certainly did not get me there fast. Having access to a car, I have gained time. I hope that I might use that time to write.
But a car is also a loss. Every time I fill up, every time I use petrol, I am hurting the environment more than I would on public transport. It is hard to reconcile that fact with the personal freedom a car has afforded me. Because a car is an object with many associations — of independence, of responsibility, of travel, of growing up. My car symbolises the changes of the last few years. I have become more confident, more independent, and I have persevered enough to learn a skill that does not come naturally to me. I also have to make daily choices, weighing up personal conveniences against climate disaster.
Cars drive in and out of my poems unbidden, somehow symbolic of this period of my life.
I wonder what object shall consume me next?
The poem ‘Red car, red car’ is printed in issue #7 of Strix Magazine.
