Mutant poetry

Ever since I read Mutants, I’ve been mulling over the idea of writing a group of poems around the idea of mutants and mutation.

The human (and indeed animal) stories – poor old Charles Byrne, freak-shows, the Elephant Man, court dwarves, superheroes and so on – are interesting source material; the science is somewhat interesting and provides extra source material by its connection to natural selection, ontogeny, Chernobyl, teratogens; the general idea of mutation has all sorts of metaphorical possibilties; and the word is attention-grabbing.

One possibility would be a set of ‘mutant sonnets’. The baseline of an established form would allow the formal mutation of the poems to be made apparent. Alternatively, the language could be ‘mutated’ in other ways. And the theme doesn’t have to extend to formal/linguistic considerations at all.

Something to consider. Perhaps a trip to the Hunterian is in order.