| Growing a Poem by Patricia Griffin Poetry is my favourite form of writing. It is a succinct way of recreatinga scene and expressing an emotion. The births of many of my poems begin whenI am walking in the country or by the sea. The seed may be sown in my mindby observing something in detail, perhaps as trivial as ripples on a puddle.The observation might promote a feeling or jog a memory which causes me tothink of a poetic line. Sometimes I will jot it down before it disappearsinto the ether but I never try to write a poem until it has had time to developnaturally. This may take days, even weeks. The idea swirls in and out of my conscious mind until it has grown so bigthat I feel compelled to place it onto paper. My most creative time is thatblissful occasion between sleep and wake. It is still a long way from being fully formed. The first line usually determines the mood and rhythm of thepoem yet it doesn't always retain its premiere position. The poem has to be nurtured: I work on the lines, trying to make them sound pleasing to the ear; I scrutinise words to ensure they are precise. After putting it asidefor a while I prune and rearrange. I repeat this process again and again. The theme of the final poem is sometimes quite divorced from the originalidea. I prefer writing in free verse; I find it less restricting. AlthoughI am usually an organised person, writing in this style allows me to growa poem naturally, and so, hopefully, produce a bloom that will be admired. | Inspiration & the keeping of notes by Chris Hobday I have plenty of notebooks, but I don’t tend to always have one handy. If, unlike me, you find yourself able to achieve some something resembling organisation, then always keep a notebook within arm’s reach (and a pen, too). It’s amazing where ideas just come to you – think of them as if they’re settling, from out of the air, all the time like dust motes. A good idea or a good line can come to you when you’re waiting for the bus, sitting on the toilet or running from the police. I don’t like to write ideas down straight away, though. I’ve found that it often helps to leave an idea fermenting for a while, before you tackle it properly. I tend to make a brief note, just something to trigger the image or line again, in my notebook (or on the back of a bus ticket, etc.) while my subconscious beavers away, making connections that my conscious mind would find more difficult. This way, when you start thinking again about your idea, you might find that your subconscious mind has built up a whole galaxy of concepts around that one central nucleus. Sometimes, when you try to write a poem about an idea the second you have the idea, you don’t do the idea justice. After all, how many times have you gone back to old poems, been thoroughly disgusted and completely rewritten them? Brevity(?) It is a very modern notion to trim poems down to the least possible number of syllables. I remember an old Fry and Laurie sketch, in which Hugh reads out a poem which is simply “Li – ” and Stephen says: “my goodness, that is short.” I do believe that short images, concise images, are often the most powerful, but sometimes you can crop the life out of your work, not to mention cut the poem’s tongue out. If you’ve got big ideas for your poem – for instance, if you’re tackling a fairly hefty theme – it might help to write a fairly hefty poem. When is the last time you wrote something LONG? Take a glance at some of the longer Romantic poetry – hundreds upon hundreds of lines some of it, and it’s marvellously rich. Don’t be afraid to explore your theme. You can keep the phrases within the poem’s body short and to the point, but remember, if your poem’s good, your audience won’t get bored. I’ve read four-liners that have bored the pants off me, because they haven’t said anything. Essentially, you need to keep in mind that acrobats don’t make very good sumo-wrestlers, and vice-versa. As long as you remember that shorter is not always better, whilst also being aware that economy of expression is a virtue, you’ll learn when to keep things brief, and when to explore at length. Measure yourself against the masters If you’re serious about writing poetry, then you need to read lots of it. After all, you won’t learn to play guitar properly unless you listen to a guitarist, or learn how to play football without watching a football game. Spend an hour or so, regularly, in the library with a pile of poetry books. Start with those big bumper selections like ‘The Nation’s Favourite Poems’ (which contains some great stuff, but I still can’t imagine why anyone really likes The Lady of Shallott). Try reading it cover to cover, just to get an idea of the many different ways to tackle an idea. If any pieces grab you, go out and read a collection of poems by that particular poet, try to get a feel of how they see the world. Reading poems in isolation isn’t as helpful as you might think – you’re not getting enough of an insight into the peculiarities of each poet, what sets them apart from the rest of the pack. However, reading an anthology will expose you to lots of new writers, and some of them are bound to strike a chord with you. I think it’s a good idea to measure yourself against the best poets you’ve come across. Try to imagine what Ted Hughes or Sylvia Plath would say about the poem you’ve just written. Imagine what Eliot would write about it in one of his critical essays. If you know anyone who’s handy with poetry, show them some of your work. Dealing with criticism This is a tricky one. I would say, adhere to two basic principles. First and foremost, be your own strictest critic and your own most ruthless editor, and take everyone else’s opinions with a huge pinch of salt. For example, if you write something that niggles you, and seems a little off, don’t take someone’s word for it if they say it’s wonderful. Secondly, be open to advice. Alright, so there’s a contradiction there, but my point is this: the finest poets believed in themselves, and they only took advice from those whose work impressed them. Don’t be afraid to ignore advice and work things out for yourself (although, if Seamus Heaney offered me advice, I’d probably take it without a second thought) because, ultimately, your poetry is a window into your personal world, or the light from that window; you need to find your own voice, and how can you do that if you let another poet turn you into a ventriloquist’s doll by following every piece of advice they offer? Join a writing group When you’ve read a little, and written a few poems that make you puff your chest out, you really need to join a group, or if you can’t find one, start your own. Meet with these strangers (it helps if they aren’t your best mates) as regularly as you can, and take it in turns to read out original poems. Then let everybody comment on each poem. You will learn a hell of a lot this way, not to mention expose yourself to proper criticism for probably the first time. Also, you will get the opportunity to read your work out aloud. I used to hate this aspect of poetry, as it seemed a million miles away from being huddled over a desk, reading or writing in silence, letting the words gleam rather than ring out in my head. I still find readings nerve-wracking, but I do at least enjoy them now. You’ll get confidence from one of two things: if you are confident that your poem is good, you can feed off that; if you’re already a confident speaker, this will help add conviction to your lines. Poems are meant to be ‘out there’ – if you’ve written something good, why be selfish and keep it to yourself? | Poetry-Writing Tips by Luigi Marchini Before I begin I feel I need to highlight the fact that this not a set of guidelines or a set of rules and regulations that you must adhere to. What follows is a brief summation of how I go about the act of writing, of how I put pen to paper, of how I venture into that undiscovered country. But I am not you. I do not bring the same insight or experience to the table, and you yourself will differ from everyone else. The disclaimer over, I can start. Notebooks I do not use notebooks. Actually that is not true-I might use them to jot the odd memorable line I hear on TV, or read somewhere. For example I took the famous quote from the film Apocalypse Now, ‘I Love the Smell of Napalm in the Morning’ and changed it to ’We Love the Smell of the Napalm in the Evening’ for the title of a poem. This is not plagiarism but merely borrowing. Do not be afraid to this: use other works as inspiration and feel free to adapt. Apocalypse Now itself is nothing but a reworking of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and for me it is as much a masterpiece. How much of Shakespeare’s ideas are original? None I would say, the difference being that his genius elevated his writing far above that of his source material. There is a famous quote about borrowing being the sincerest form of flattery or something like that. Either Greene or Wilde most likely-I am sure someone will provide the exact quotation and source. A good exercise is to take a piece you like and write into it. For example if you were to take the opening lines of Shelley’s poem ‘Mont Blanc’, The everlasting universe of things Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid wave you could write something like this: The hand on my desk is my hand the everlasting gentleman whose universe means you; sometimes you mean him, and of him the comfortable Thames holds little as it flows through the mind in search of the rest All of Shelley’s lines are still there, in order. So whose poem is it now? True, I have annihilated Shelley’s masterpiece, but it still sits there lording over all of Europe. I think we should always challenge the boundaries of language and ownership, and not limit ourselves to merely reordering words form the dictionary. I feel I have digressed, so let’s get back to notebooks. I do not use them in the way I was taught: to capture a mood, a feeling, a scene, etc. I used to when I first started writing but I felt that the very act of putting a thought to paper, of recording it renders the original inspiration redundant. Let me explain. To recapture that moment, that feeling is impossible. Even if you do have a notebook to hand, the very second you even think about recording it, you have lost that moment. It becomes a cooling off period, a narrative. That one second where your heart catches fire, knees tremble, that great repulsion or attraction, can never be recaptured and, for me, trying to do so has the opposite effect: it distances me from it. I want to write at that time before, at that moment still in fusion. Of course this is not possible, so I don’t attempt to use experiences as inspiration. Sounds strange, doesn’t it? I may have used familiar characters and names but that is all. I get my inspiration purely by imagining what I would do in a given situation. By closing my eyes and ears, by immersing myself into my imagination When I Write Early mornings and late nights are the best time for me. That is when my mind is at its most creative. I don’t know why, perhaps something to do with it being relaxed or purely a minimum of distraction. When I say early in the morning I mean around 5am, and late at night is from around 11pm. If you haven’t tried writing at these times then give it a go. It is in those moments when the darkness outside is questioning itself, asking itself if it is time to take a break or to get to work, that brief time where hesitancy reigns supreme, that ones subconscious lets itself go. Poetry I find myself writing more poetry now than prose. Whether it is any good or not is for someone else to decide, but I enjoy it which is the most important thing. You all know the old adage about less being more; well I do believe in it. This is especially true in poetry though as I have said it is also, for me, very much applicable to short fiction. The poems that work best are simply constructed but which, on closer inspection, say more than meets the eye. This is not an easy skill but there are people that achieve this regularly and to unbelievably good effect; Billy Collins for example. As I have said, I do not like to see wasted words. I do not write in rhyme. I have tried but have never succeeded in creating a realistic voice, and my rhyming has been so simplistic that I have ended up trivialising important (to me) ‘themes’. Therefore I admire any one that writes in rhyme for me: it is a skill which I feel I can never achieve. The discipline and rigid structure inhibit me also I feel. Of course free verse can have a rhythm of its own and the relationship between each word in achieving an internal rhyme can be just as hard to achieve. I haven’t spoken about the various aspects of language such as imagery because this is not a lesson: I am certainly in no position (or qualified) to teach anyone. My aim was just to show some light on how I write and perhaps put a character into that faceless name that appears on the Logos magazine. I hope I succeeded. |