Time to write: Beginning a Poem 2

So, moving on from the previous post, it’s actually time to write the poem. The first decision is whether it’s going to be free verse, or formal. The choice depends on the theme, the intent, the progression I want to make, the flow of images, the background research and the style of language. By this stage, I’ve probably a few images and maybe a couple of lines. How best to fit them in isn’t often clear, so I usually just hold them in mind while I’m writing. There’s a decision to be made about whether I want the poem to carry more than one interpretation, or whether it’ll be a more straightforward one. The latter I most often reserve for topical, sometimes off-the-cuff poems, but, generally, I like to reflect for a while on what I’m to write. Occasionally I’ll produce a piece of light or mono-themed verse in a couple of hours, spend an hour or so tidying it up and then declare it finished. That doesn’t feel like work, but it’s a good exercise in versifying, perhaps trying out a new form. The above isn’t an ordered set of choices, but it is what swirls in my mind as I start to put pen to paper – more often, these days, fingers to key pads. 

The most important are the topic and the images. Poetry, for me, needs striking themes, images and an acute sense of the sound of the language.

Themes vary, though, looking back over my work, not that greatly. Politics and injustice incense me; I’m often touched by everyday happenings; nature is another inspiration; anything small or seemingly insignificant attracts me; people’s daily lives are an interest and I’m drawn to outsiders and anti-establishment figures; memories and their attendant emotions well up; spirituality and wrestling with the unseen pique me; history and archaeology intrigue me – in fact, all of man’s and nature’s achievements I find intriguing. Themes along these lines are present in my poetry, along with the requisite senses, a plethora of emotions and a considerable degree of reflection. I can never tell which theme will strike me enough to consider that there’s a poem waiting to be born and I don’t, at the point of writing, particularly want to delve very deeply into my sub-conscious to know what influences me. All I want is to write. Am I driven by a need at that time? Yes, though in some circumstances writing’s a chore and hard work – usually at a later stage of the process.

I have a very visual sense; most often images come to me either through something I’ve seen, or because I can conjure them up in my mind’s eye.  An image can be a daisy growing through a crack in concrete, pictures of a massacre, a chipped teacup, a mythological figure, a building or room, an arresting painting that has me lingering in front of it, a politician, the effects of frailty or illness – anything that stops me in my tracks and whose effects stay with me for a notable while. Images range from horror through to amusement and affection. It might be that I pair an image with another or others, for support or contrast, or it may be standalone. It may be that I mine one image for many layers of meaning and find ways to weave them into a poem. Whatever else, I don’t assume they have to be original; my task is to present them in a fresh way that’s unique to me.

I seem to have a sensitive auditory set-up. The latter might go hand-in-hand with being a musician; For me, poetry is music. I play a number of instruments and used to sing until the voice decayed with old age. I’m used to listening with full attention and it’s no great stretch to apply this to the sound of the language. I call it auditory observation. Certain themes or images might suggest a particular cadence or arrangement of words and the choice between free verse and formal. Sometimes a line, lyrical or discordant, will come to me and I’ll use that as the start of a poem. Usually, there’s a theme to the line and it nearly always suggests images of its own. At the early stages of writing a poem, if I don’t like the sound of a line or stanza I’ll rewrite it and check its sonority. Even if I’m not writing formal verse, I’ll often go for internal rhymes and metres where they serve the poem’s purpose. Using onomatopoeia and alliteration are second nature, though I’m no Gerard Manley Hopkins; I like the effects to be subtler than his often are. As I write, I’m forever speaking out lines; the sound of language is an important part of the process.

Poems come to me from many directions. I don’t discriminate – as long as they come. I seem to have no control over that process. In fact, the opposite seems to apply. Where my mind dictates that I should write a poem on a particular theme, nine times out of ten it’s a failure; the poem’s forced, the lines are clotted, the images are dead and the result’s dire. I don’t want to get into a definition of “inspiration,” but there has to be something that jogs the imagination into poetic action. These days, I don’t seem to have problems with finding ideas for poems – that may be because I’ve had so many years of practice – but, in the early days of writing, I did. I used to set myself exercises to do, often themes or images; sometimes these were aligned to different stanzaic types of formal verse – all apprenticeship stuff. Things are easier with the internet: it’s possible to Google exercises in writing poetry, as here or here. The early stages of writing a poem is an apprenticeship in itself; mastery is achieved later, when revising, editing and checking the poems. I’ll come to those in a later post.