Thoughts on Writing Poetry

Since I completed a course in creative writing earlier this year I have meant to start actually writing some of my own poetry: partly to show off my new skills (ahem, I struggled with the poetry section!) and of course also to practice what I have been taught.

One of the lessons I learnt was that you don't have to be a genius to write competent poetry, but you do have to be in possession of certain things. One, you need to have a grasp of its basic principles.  This means that you need to understand what constitutes poetry and what makes it successful in fulfilling the requirements of the reduced form.

As I understand it, putting aside formal rhythmic constructions (something that can further aid the constrained form) what one needs to understand about the alternative,free verse is that as a poem it is the intensity of the language rather than the measuring of its construction regularity that helps it work. A process of heightened language with all extraneous fat trimmed off, where the effects of the poems subject and theme are intensely illuminated.

I feel that there is a truth in there somewhere based on one of my failures and the reactions I received when I submitted it for marking. It was about a market house building and how it had operated under a mighty clock that ticked through history chronicling hundreds of years events that happened under its watch (no pun intended). The problem with it - despite my straining for figurative language in every single line, was that it lacked specific focus. It was about the building, it was about the clock, it was about my relationship with the clock and it was about differing events that were observed and reiterated by the speaker should the clock be able to ever tell him its life story. In short it was all over the place. This, despite many people liking it because of its good use of imagery and the helpful implied rhythm, wasn't really poetry, it was more like chopped prose. It told a story that could have been reconfigured into a longer form with all breaks reconnected into sentences and paragraphs.  It was an account with many nods to poetic form (not metrical but other techniques to do with poetic language) but not a deeply felt interrogation into a specific thing that spotlighted something specific in a typically poetic-like incremental way.

So rather than stepping off a bus (which I did) into the granular and mottled pavements which still had the wreckage of Saturday night's wrappers and noticing the clock and wondering what it made of me, what it thought of the events the previous night and the last three hundred years, I would have been better concentrating on the pavement - with its mottled surface and its hard uncomplaining manner. its mossy dampness, its dried blood, the papery flotsam  that floated above it like blasted ticker-tape. Or, stayed with the clock with its stern-blinded eye and ginger bread bricks and stayed with it. Not sure whether the subject matters: pavements or clocks in themselves are worthy of poems, but this is just an example of where I went wrong. I didn't place a light on something and then stay with it making evident why I was writing the thing.

The other is to love language and be prepared to experiment with it. Cliche is the darkest pit into which all original writing incompetence bubbles and seethes - a midden of word menu choices stolen and guarded by imps which are sold to the tired, the unimaginative and the linguistically bereft.  I have done it myself many times. Described something not in terms of my own perceptions but in ways in which I have already heard them - as good as those ways might have seemed at the time.  No prose let alone poem - which requires maximum individuality based on its tiny size - could possibly survive a Woolworth's style language pic and mix. Any one who's anyone would simply see through it. This isn't from the heart they'd say - this is a mental cut and paste - a borrowing of generics - nothing new to see here. That's why a love of language is the other thing you need as a poet. To know what a poem should be about and shine a light on it without wavering.  And play with language so much it looks like it was written in a spiraling vortex that's time shifted from babel.

I'd like to finish here with a few words to add to My Dream Lexicon which is what this whole blog's about. Completely random and in themselves nothing special but at least provide a flavour of the kind of odd, eccentric,unexpected kinds of words any poem I write from now on will include.

So, if you scroop you emit a grating or creaking sound. Cronk is a kind of croak, apparently.  Gride means to grate or scrape harshly - I wonder if you can gride on someone's nerves?   A swazzle is a device that you place in your mouth to generate a Punch and Judy style vocalization, (easily swallowed apparently so treat with extreme care.) To yawp is to make a raucous noise and dirdum means humming and droning. A huzz is an involuntary shiver,and a gilderoy describes a very proud person. I have lists of these words all ready for my new career as a poet which is of course is really what this world needs.  

Words and Tweets 1

Lately I have been feeling indebted to Twitter.  Not because it has been enlivening my day with reports from witty contributors who appear on my timeline with their daily apercus, clever jokes, germane observations and so on - no, I feel indebted because I'm supposed to be writing more, and I'm not.  But I am tweeting a bit.  Actually, quite a lot when things are happening - or rather things are going on in my life that seem to provide material. And tweeting is quick.  It is also presented to others very quickly which satisfies the: 'who am I writing this for again?' question that's in the back of every writer's mind. And if that's not enough, it also fulfills that odd 'need' to memorialize an event of any kind, notates every scrap of knowledge or fact or word that might be of use sometime later - in short it's a good little substitute for the infamous writer's notebook. So well done Twitter.

But it wasn't supposed to be like this. I have recently spent some time in London and I have just returned from  a long week-end in Dublin. Both places have been the themes of many a Tweet lately. But very little proper writing. So should I feel indebted to Twitter? Perhaps. If it wasn't for this useful shorthand I would have shaken off the despairing laziness I am prone to. But perhaps micro blogging with Twitter gives me permission to indulge in that laziness. Perhaps I would have written something of a decent length, developed a decent analysis of something  before now. Perhaps Twitter is a bad thing.  Being idle normally provides me with a wake up jolt after an indeterminate amount of time and I know I have to do something. But  if I labour under the misconception that I'm not being idle because I am Tweeting - and after all don't those Tweets require a writer's skill? (This is true up to a point if you value the impact of a paragraph over all other writing).  And if I am crafting clever, profound, observational asides, aren't I keeping the creative pot boiling and well stirred and defeating the tempting evils of indolence?  Again, perhaps. Perhaps Tweeting is good because doing nothing is so very bad.

But surely Tweeting shouldn't be used as an excuse for not writing, rather, it should act as a spring board for more in-depth writing - even if the paragraphs found within the longer form aren't as cleverly succinct or well constructed in the end, as each independently considered Tweet. How could they ever be, you would never get to the end of anything longer. I have known tweets to have a birth so painful, so stubborn, so impossible - they've been sent back up the chute and they die of asphyxiation never to re-emerge to blankly blink against the glare of expectation.  

Maybe to all that. But this blog is called 'My Dream Lexicon' - and quite a few of my Tweets have been formed when I'm not feeling humorous or profound or cruel or self-satisfied but are just efforts at language use practice.  No real surprise there for someone who owns a blog, just one of many but still, who owns a blog that suggests a passion for language and words. Here are a few of the Tweets that concentrated on words during the last few weeks - where better to reiterate them than on my wordy blog:

Rasorial:  Given to scratching around for food like poultry. As I writer I can see that it would be useful figuratively if not literally.   My Tweet read: 'Given to scratching the ground for food, as poultry. I shall count the days until I use this word (wait for it) figuratively.'  Not a great Tweet - the more interesting ones (not necessarily the word themed ones) are the ones that have been shoe-horned into 140 characters but still work. In some cases, I like to think, rather well.

Ramfeezled: 'A priceless gift from OED means worn out, exhausted, confused, muddled. Not sure of its derivation but I welcome it to my life.'  What I meant there I suppose was that I recognised it as being a useful word and term and as a writer words are very much the building blocks of the trade - and lively conversation is probably the most underrated skill in existence. A word like ramfeezled can only make you into both a more interesting writer (unless or until it catches on to such an extent it becomes tired and cliched) and a surprisingly good, perhaps funny wise engaging conversationalist.That's the theory anyway. Look at its construction it's got everything. Recognizing this is probably one of the skills you need as a word smith.  There are legions of scrabble experts out there who know twice the words of average mortals who look as if they could send the guests at a go-naked swingers only New Years Party in a free pub into a haze of mind numbed boredom. It's not just knowing the words, it's knowing how to use them. But you do still have to know them - but that's just part of it.

Sehnsucht: The longing for something.  The inconsolable longing in the human heart for something. Part of the Germans have a word for it season. The thinking behind this notion of the German language is that though the language is smaller, they have prioritized in areas where we haven't in the validating the coinages within the German speaking world. Here they have acknowledged that a condition existed for which a word should be be properly ascribed. Part of the German psyche must have contributed to the need for a word to describe succinctly a feeling that is known within the human emotional repertoire. English people will experience the same feelings - but presumably will have to describe them as best they can withing the limits of their own language dropping in words like heart-break or unexpected longing, or crafting intricately involved sentences to make the point incrementally.  My heart feels empty, something is missing. I don't know what it is but the absence of something is making me feel bereft, down, sad. If I could just identify what it is I could begin to rectify this absence this hole from which something must fill. And so on. A German speaker theoretically would stop you in mid flow and say Ja ja du bist sehnsucht which would bring elucidation (if not to German speakers) and a little comfort to the sufferer.