E-Book, Englisch, 200 Seiten
Bell / Commane How to Be a Poet
1. Auflage 2017
ISBN: 978-1-911027-39-3
Verlag: Nine Arches Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection
E-Book, Englisch, 200 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-911027-39-3
Verlag: Nine Arches Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection
Jo Bell was born in Sheffield and grew up on the fringes of the Derbyshire Peak District, leaving school just after the Miners' Strike. She became an industrial archaeologist, specialising in coal and lead mines. A winner of the Charles Causley Prize and the Manchester Cathedral Prize, she was the first Canal Laureate for the UK appointed by the Poetry Society and the Canal & River Trust. She lives on a narrowboat on the English waterways. Kith (Nine Arches Press) is Jo Bell's second collection of poems.
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CHAPTER SEVEN
How to Start a Poem
Where does the poem begin? It’s a very good question.
I’d wager that most good poems have their roots firmly in your memory and imagination long before the words themselves ever make their way onto the page. Even before you realise it, the first inklings of a poem are there, lodged amongst ideas that interest, excite or trouble you, awaiting the catalytic moment and the right handful of words that will bring it into being.
Sometimes, the poem-in-waiting is released by a throwaway phrase we hear in a crowd, an image that comes to mind when we’re about to go to sleep, or a memory that comes back to us when we take a short cut through a place we used to know. The right line or phrase might rise to the surface, and bring together a number of previously unconnected thoughts and designs. Like bacteria on a petri dish, it is sometimes the introduction of the germ of an idea to the right environmental conditions that will help a poem find its place to flourish.
There are no secret tricks for getting a poem out and onto the page, but you will, as your confidence and experience as a poet grows, learn to trust your writing habits and know how to follow up the scent of a good poem, doggedly. There will also be times when it is something more formal – an exercise, a form or structure, or an over-arching concept, that will help a poem to be realised and come alive. Poetry is part alchemy, part practical formula. It is in these combinations that we find new things happening; somewhere between happenstance and constrictions, the rule-making and rule-breaking.
I was recently talking to a mentee about the process of writing poems and they confessed they were looking forward to the time when, like ‘all the proper poets’ they would ‘no longer struggle to start a poem’. I admitted to them (and I hope that it reassuring in a way to know this, rather than disheartening) that the anxiety of the blank page and how to get the poem started never really goes away, whatever stage a writer is at, and that even the most successful poets you can think of will still wrestle with starting, sustaining and writing a poem. There will always be times when a poem is difficult to coax out, and I encouraged them to not to think that the once you are a ‘proper poet’ (a false distinction we use when we are yet to step fully into our own authority as writers) it all suddenly becomes easy and you no longer experience this struggle to create. All we can learn is how to manage the difficulties of the process so they do not become limiting – and to both control and embrace the forces which may otherwise stop us writing altogether, and put them to good work in serving the poem.
How, then, do we combine good writing habits with this complicated mix of discipline and inspiration? How do we make time for these two unlikely companions to find each other on good terms and help a poem to find its beginning?
Our headful of ideas can only start to take shape if you can give them the necessary page space, writing space and time to do so. However, the reality is that we all lead busy, noisy lives. We are interrupted by the demands of our everyday business, we bend to the siren call of our emails and notifications, we have work to do and lives often full of unplanned diversions, and we are bound by the time we need to give to others and to ourselves to keep it all together. None of us here are frilly-shirted scribes in wistful towers, biding our time until the muse finds us, and it is completely fine to admit to this.
With this in mind, let’s explore some tips on how we ensure that, even in the midst of our busy lives, we can still create small pockets of time to write in, and suggest some ways in which you can get poems jump-started…
The regular act of writing and of writing in small but steady amounts will be your companion. Don’t worry at the early stages about whether it’s any good. It’s too early to tell. Write long, and be prepared to sift the glimmer of promising treasure from the note-form poems and scrawled ideas. Regular writing does not have to be every day, or follow any form of regimented programme of ‘enforced’ writing time. Follow what feels right and natural for you – it might be setting aside the last day of every month as a writing day, for instance.
Get your attention back. If you find social media or the online world in general a massive distraction, delete your apps, even just for a few hours, or only use social media between certain hours. Take away the temptation and make sure you reduce the chance for updates and notifications to interrupt you as you reclaim your writing and thinking time. Put an out-of-office or vacation message on your email for a day or two so you won’t feel the knee-jerk necessity to respond to things immediately.
If you only have limited time to write, work with this rather than against it. Not many of us have the luxury of days at a time to give to writing, or even hours, so don’t feel frustrated by lack of time and let this stop you writing. There is a myth that abounds that all great poetry has to be written on a workshop, retreat, or an MA Creative Writing course, or by spending days and days at a time in writing – whilst these can be useful, they can also be unrealistic at this stage, when all you really need to do is sit down somewhere with your words when you can. I didn’t realise I’d written a complete collection of poems until someone made me sit down and look at the ten years’ worth of poems I had gradually been accruing. Don’t let the illusion of waiting for ‘special writing time’ – ring-fenced and just out of reach – stop you from writing. Follow your urges, write when you can and when you have something to say.
Create small bursts of time for writing if that is all you have – anything from a regular ten minutes to an hour. Get up early, or if you’re a night-owl, add half an hour onto the day for writing. Keep a diary and develop a habit for writing regularly even if it’s nothing like poetry yet – all writing is good writing practice, so don’t worry if you’re not producing poems but just notes, sketches and ideas, long screeds that aren’t yet quite forming themselves. You can come back at a later stage. Rescue the time that you normally spend reading the papers on the train or waiting for the potatoes to boil, or spend online doing nothing in particular.
Keep everything you write, and come back to it when you are able to set aside some concentrated time for redrafting. Not all of this writing will be good or even necessary, but amongst it you may find the spark you are looking for. Book an afternoon out to your writing when you feel ready to get your notes in order (just as you’d book some time out to go the dentists, but hopefully more enjoyable). Make sure you have a few hours to follow where the threads of where your writing wants to go. Use this time to redraft as well as writing new things. You will find that having time to redraft not only helps to continually sharpen poems (and your editorial instincts), but will nourish your creative imagination; you are more likely to be better attuned to producing further new writing in this mindset.
Value time and space to simply think about things. Spend time not writing but thinking and even just doing other things that leave the mind free to wander; crafts, physical activity, chores. I ruminate on poems long before I ever write them, even if I don’t actively realise this is what I’m doing. I think about them when I’m cooking, or walking the dog or daydreaming on the train. I turn ideas over and over, and find some of the best lines will rise up out of nowhere and come to me when I’m occupied in something else. Things will come back to me, years after I first thought about them, finally finding their right moment in the spotlight.
Note down those little ideas that drop into your head, and try not to lose them – pop them on your phone or in a notebook. The seeds of an idea are so valuable and often the beginnings of something much larger that you can come back to when you’ve more time to give to them. I find that when I note down odd lines, and finally return to them, they will surprise me by taking off in unexpected directions. It’s as if in noting it down, you allow something to quietly take root. Offline, you brain is still turning the idea over even if you’re not fully conscious of it. Writing it makes it real.
Give yourself permission to write anything. Don’t think at this stage about writing a poem or doing anything except putting a pen to paper. If writing is like exercising a muscle (the imagination), sometimes a more extended warm up is necessary. No one is going to ask to see your notes, any more than they’d want to watch athletes limbering up for an hour before a marathon, so don’t fret if nothing that appears to be a poem has emerged to begin with.
Give yourself permission to write long and to write badly, to write nonsense, and for now, especially if you’re finding getting started difficult, just to write. Write non-stop and automatically for a few minutes, even if it means writing one sentence or word again and again until you can break out of it and make a dash for something new to say.
Change the scene, change...
