POEM OF THE DAY

Last year marked the 200th anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley’s celebrated horror story Frankenstein, which she started to write in Geneva in 1816. Not as well known is the fact that the youthful author had spent almost two years before that in Dundee and admitted gaining inspiration from her surroundings there: “It was beneath the trees of the grounds belonging to our house or the bleak sides of the woodless mountains near, that my true compositions of the airy flights of my imagination were born and fostered.” George Robertson of Broughty Ferry imagines her first effort at the tale.

THE BIRTH OF FRANKENSTEIN

At dark of night, in Den o’ Mains two worthies dig up fresh remains and cart them to the castle gates where Doctor Claverhouse awaits to buy the corpse, no palaver, he’ll pay much for one cadaver.

The doctor’s henchman in the lab arrays the corpse upon the slab carefully cuts off all the clothing not with love, but neither loathing.

The body’s clamped in iron shackles wrist and chest and round the ankles.

Outside you’ll hear the thunder growl it’s coming closer from Craigowl.

The lightning strikes, the spark of life, the monster jolts and comes alive. It groans and wails and breaks his chains and Doctor Claverhouse proclaims. . .

[Mary stops and questions her imaginings, her fantasies.]

But, could this genre work for me? Would the public buy it?

I think I’ll wait a few more years then perhaps I’ll try it.