Rock Bottom

Inspiration

Rock Bottom was originally written for Round Two of the 2010 Whittaker Prize. The prompt used was "Unbeknownst to me, I can't hear a damn thing underwater." It was given a score of 87/100 by the judge, Catherine Edmunds.

Publications

Rock Bottom was published by Ink, Sweat & Tears on April 25th, 2010. It was also published in the anthology resulting from the Whittaker Prize competition, Body Parts and Coal Dust.

Notes

Rock Bottom was inspired by the career of Robert Wyatt (and indeed named after my favourite album of his). It's an example of a concrete poem, and in the original version, the colour actually changed through various shades of blue. Unfortunately, this wasn't really going to be possible in the version that appeared in Love and Loss and Other Important Stuff, but I think they've done a rather fine job using shades of grey instead.