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.
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment