My poem “Plight of the Jester has been published in The Rotten Pomegranate’s Divine Comedy Edition.
Plight of the Jester was an interesting poem to write because it was my first foray into writing in a Middle English or Shakespearean style. I originally saw that The Rotten Pomegranate had an open call for their Divine Comedy Edition, way back in September (I think), and the artwork they used in the call struck me as interesting for some reason. They used images of a court jester. Even though the call was for Hell-themed stories and poems, I liked the idea of using a jester as the protagonist.
While I initially leaned toward writing a short story about a jester falling in love with a princess (a forbidden love type of deal), I quickly realized it would work better as a narrative poem. As tends to happen often with my writing, I ended up focusing more on the language than the story, and so the project stalled out until I missed the deadline. Fortunately, The Rotten Pomegranate extended their deadline a few months, and I took that as a sign to finish the poem.
It was rough going for a bit. I wrote a simplistic rhyming version of the poem first. And then I painstakingly went through each line and Shakespeared the shit out of the damn thing! Ultimately, I’m happy with the outcome. Even if nobody can understand it. Which is how most people feel when reading Shakespeare anyway.
Caleb James K. 