Some notes on the Marilyn Poems

The Marilyn poems are a sequence loosely based around artifacts from the life of Marilyn Monroe.They are not poems about Marilyn Monroe, nor do they necessarily reflect the historical record. They are examples of creative writing, or perhaps can be seen as exercises of "poetic license". The poems are written to investigate certain notions - "a dripping tap" examines loneliness and sexuality, "Arthur driving his wife home" is based on a photograph and explores ambition, motivation, "Marilyn does not Travel in the Back Seat of a Car" investigates imagined futures. Some of the Marilyn poems tackle unusual topics. "The digital enhancement of photographs of Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio" explores a mathmatical concept - binary arithmetic - in the unusual context of a partnership and "Marilyn and the Physics of David Deutsch" examines multiple possibilities in time, or multiple universes.


The Marilyn poems have been written over a long period - the first were written in 2004 and there was a long break when no Marilyn poem was written, lasting from 2007 to 2009. Because the poems are not primarily about Marilyn Monroe, the poems are not written at any particular time.