The dual theme of my A to Z Challenge this year is the world of Commodities and Poetry Forms so the juxtaposition of these two themes may throw up some strange poems – could be a Heroic Ode to Heating Oil or will it merit a Haiku or a Haibun – whichever, I will be endeavouring to bring you interesting facts about commodities that may change the way you think about the stuff we variously depend on…
By commodity I mean certain items that are of both sufficient value/volume to be traded in special markets and are generally volatile enough to attract traders in “Futures” which are a way of hedging bets in the trading world of stocks, shares and commodities.
The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day!
Worldwide trade in Copper 2022 $ 304.79
Hang on I hear you say – that’s a “D” poem form but Copper is a “C” commodity – what gives? Well I simply couldn’t find a commodity beginning with D – I looked at Dates but whilst in one sense, everything that is grown and traded is a “commodity”, but this A to Z is looking at commodities in the stricter sense of things that are traded in certain special markets – often as “futures”. A future is something that is bought ahead of time on the gamble that it might have gone up in price come harvest or delivery time. Seemingly Dates are not traded as futures in the way that Cocoa is. So no “D’s” but there are so many “C’s” to choose from hence Copper but with a Duplex poem. Other contenders were Cheese, Coffee, Corn, Cotton, and Crude Oil…
We often refer, often disparagingly, to the Stone Age and somewhat more respectfully to the Iron Age as if that is where the real technology that defines our human race, really began. It’s true that the Stone Age went on for a long time with certain tools remaining unchanged for many thousands of years but there were three great “metal ages” of which Iron was the third – before that, metallurgists cut their teeth during the Copper Age and then the Bronze Age, from which we can say that Copper is one of the oldest important commodities. Even when the second metal age – the Bronze Age began, bronze is mainly copper – an alloy of copper with a small amount of Tin added together (alloyed), the properties are different and better than either on their own – that’s the magic of Metallurgy! To smelt Copper, you have to reach 1,085 °C but this is still less than the Iron of the Third Metal Age would require (1,538 °C) however copper and more so bronze tools were an improvement on the stone tools that preceded them – in fact, it is thought that a shortage of good material for making stone tools in Mesopotamia, was the driving force behind the development of Copper smelting – this is the same area where Barley had been part of an agricultural revolution. Agriculture produced a surplus of food liberating man to develop trading leading to the Urban revolution and this in turn, was a pre-requisite for the research and development of metallurgy.
There is a fascinating timeline of the development and importance of Copper here. Initially, Copper was cold-worked because unlike Aluminium, copper occurs as a native (pure metal form) metal in nature and it is both soft and malleable to work into objects. However, as people experimented with smelting, they discovered that the addition of sometimes small amounts of other metals could improve the qualities of the resultant alloy – qualities like stiffness or the ability to take and hold a sharp edge (necessary for weapons – sadly a driver of technology through the ages). And so the Copper Age gave way to the more significant Bronze Age. Nowadays, this alloy is still used, famously for casting statues, whilst Copper in its pure form has expanded to many more uses – especially in the age of electricity due to its electrical conductivity – electrical wires, telecommunication cables and digital devices. Copper pipes replaced the water poisoning Lead pipes and although other metals (including Aluminium) are used for electrical wiring, copper is the most widely used – even so the cost of copper is high enough to that its scrap value makes recycling a profitable enterprise and ripping copper pipes out of empty buildings a crime of the desperate or unscrupulous… Copper is also important in the medical field due to its anti-microbial properties and has been shown to increase agricultural yields.
As a Commodity – Copper was the third-most-consumed industrial metal in the world, after iron and aluminium, with an estimated 22m metric tons mined in 2022 rising from 16m metric tons in 2010 and in spite of this increased demand, there is more of the metal available today than at any other time in history according to the Copper Alliance.
The main producing countries of raw copper in 2020 were
Zambia – $5.77bn
Chile – $1.88bn
Namibia – $1.37bn
Bulgaria – $1.01bn
Democratic Republic of the Congo – $710m
Whilst the main importing countries were
China – $5.34bn
Switzerland – $2.3bn
Belgium – $1.29bn
Namibia – $1.18bn
India – $1.03bn
Makes you wonder what the Swiss are doing with all that copper – but that is the kind of unexpected fact you discover when you start to look behind the scenes of all the Commodities we take for granted…
And so to the poem – a Duplex is the invention of Jericho Brown and is known as a gutted sonnet—that is, part ghazal, part blues poem. The duplex is comprised of fourteen lines arranged in couplets, wherein each line is between nine and eleven syllables, the second line of the first couplet is echoed in the first line of the second couplet, and so on, and the first line of the poem is also it’s last. This repetition drives the poem along at a pace, I find…
Copper
What price the copper of a redheaded girl…
Before Bronze, or Iron was the Copper Age
Do copper bracelets ward off old age arthritis?
No copper can catch the thief of time…
Cops were known for wearing a copper badge
Good luck catching thieves of pipes from buildings
The price of copper makes the theft worthwhile
Pipes carry water – wires electricity
Wires construct the web of our digital age
The internet monitors the price of Copper
The price of raw ore and refined metal
Cuprite, Digenite, Malachite, Azurite
The prettiest of these – green Malachite but
What price the copper of a redheaded girl…
© Andrew Wilson, 2024
One of my favourite songs is by The Incredible String Band – “Red Hair”
Well, I’ve learned a few things here. The one I may remember is that cops wore a copper badge.
Ah, but did you like the poem…
I forgive you cheating on D – you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do! Besides, copper is cool. I enjoyed the poem, as well.
https://nydamprintsblackandwhite.blogspot.com/2024/03/magical-botany-d.html
Thanks Anne and your A-Z is now my regular stopping point each day…
I enjoyed the history about copper.
Ronel visiting for D: My Languishing TBR: D
Djinn
I’m glad it was up your street Ronel
Interesting… I love old copper things wearing their green patina like a badge of survivorship.
https://dbmcnicol.com/a-afterthought/
This is gorgeously rendered, Andrew! I smiled at the end ❤️❤️
Thank you Sanaa, I don’t know if you had a listen to the Red Hair video, but the lyrics are right up your romantic street…
Stepping out of the grey day she came
Her red hair falling like the sky
Love held them there in that moment
With the world passing by
He could look through all of his books
And not find a line that would do
To tell of changes she had made in him
Just by being there
So good just to walk in the light
May the moon shine down on love every night
And sometimes it seems the only things real
Are what we are and what we feel
I like the duplex form, and what an unusual topic, Andrew! I how you linked copper metal to the red-haired girl.
Thanks, Merril, I love the Duplex as its like running a relay race with the theme being passed like a baton, from line to line and often veeering in unexpected directios… I have been doing the A to Z Challenge since 2020 and I was a little unsure as to whether the theme of Commodities would hold people’s interest but sweetened by a poem in a different form for each letter, it seemed to work – and a lot of work it was! Next year I hope to tell my life in 26 objects…
What price indeed…v nice poetry, not least that all things copper is a passion of mine — and a profession. Very interesting, not least because I learnt a couple of things more. I really love working with copper as well as buying copper pieces in markets.
So glad you enjoyed it Ain – it was one of 26 poems I wote all in different alphabetically named forms this year. I couldn’t find a “D” commodity so Copper was a second “C” but the poem form was a “D” for Duplex…
What a lot of information you collected on copper, Andrew, and I love the way you melted it all down to create a gleaming, circular, copper poem.
We write in these little Silos, Kim, the Poets Pub or, in this case I wrote 26 poems for the A to Z this year, however I don’t know that anybody ventures much beyond Mr Linky to explore other posts and so I decided to cross- fertilise for OLN. Hope to see you on Saturday…
Well you had me with the first two lines! And then to come round to them at the end…and then to come round to green malachite! Malachite is one I remember from my geology class eons ago…remember thinking how pretty it was which is not a statement a geologist likes to hear! Ah yes…the red and the green – made me smile and look forward to Christmas! 🙂 These commodity poems are fun to read!
Thank you Lillian – I too studied Geology )with Geography) longer ago than I care to recognise! I had a lot of fun writing 26 different poetry forms by alphabetic title – it was hard to find them for every letter…
Well I grew up that a long time ago, Sweden was really rich in copper (maybe you have seen those big copper coins we minted that still had to the metal value of silver)…
Would love for you to write one on dates….
I haven’t seen them but I will look them up… Did you mean dates the fruit?
I did do this blog post on Dates in 2022… https://how-would-you-know.com/2022/04/dates-dehydrators-and-the-death-of-globalism.html
team malachite– love the green! thanks for the history. 🙂
Thanks, Ren – it was fun researching it all…
that final couplet shows the most valuable of all, yes?
and thank you for the commodities lesson – quite informative ~
Indeed it is – invaluable in fact…
This was wonderful live on Saturday Andrew, I like how you distil this down to that end question – what price indeed.
Thanks Paul, this is only one out of 26 poems so do feel free to explore from the AtoZ 2024 tab…
That is a wonderful duplex and thanks to you, Andrew, I think I can hold forth on my own talking about copper. (at least for a minute or so)
Thank you Punam – I think the Duplex is my favourite form because it moves things on so well and allows you to change direction in unexpected ways too. So glad you enjoyed the piece about copper too, the A to Z occupies me for a couple of months around April but it’s audience is by and large a separate one from dVerse (Li does both) and with poetry being a part of it this year it seemed a shame not to spread it a bit further, but I am glad you enjoyed the commodity element too…
From one thought to the next, we follow your movement in and out of history, puns, and metallurgy, all threaded by the enticing mystery of “the copper of a red-headed girl”! Brilliant writing, Andrew.
Thanks, Dora – exactly why I love this form so much!
“No copper can catch the thief of time…” 👍
Indeed, Shaun…