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How to Be a Poet

E-BookEPUB0 - No protectionE-Book
200 Seiten
Englisch
Nine Arches Presserschienen am04.12.2017
How to be a Poet is the brainchild of poet Jo Bell and editor Jane Commane. As a natural follow-on to the 52 Project of 2014, this book aims to help poets taking the next step in developing, working and participating in the wider creative community as a writer. How to be a Poet combines practical advice and topical mini-essays that examine both the technical and creative dimensions of being a poet. It's a no-nonsense manual where we've replaced the spanners with lots of ink, elbow grease and edits. At each step, we ask plenty of questions: what makes a poem tick over perfectly, how do we get it started when it stalls, and which warning lights should you never ignore?

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.mehr

Produkt

KlappentextHow to be a Poet is the brainchild of poet Jo Bell and editor Jane Commane. As a natural follow-on to the 52 Project of 2014, this book aims to help poets taking the next step in developing, working and participating in the wider creative community as a writer. How to be a Poet combines practical advice and topical mini-essays that examine both the technical and creative dimensions of being a poet. It's a no-nonsense manual where we've replaced the spanners with lots of ink, elbow grease and edits. At each step, we ask plenty of questions: what makes a poem tick over perfectly, how do we get it started when it stalls, and which warning lights should you never ignore?

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.
Details
Weitere ISBN/GTIN9781911027393
ProduktartE-Book
EinbandartE-Book
FormatEPUB
Format Hinweis0 - No protection
FormatE101
Erscheinungsjahr2017
Erscheinungsdatum04.12.2017
Seiten200 Seiten
SpracheEnglisch
Dateigrösse3298 Kbytes
Artikel-Nr.13445258
Rubriken
Genre9201

Inhalt/Kritik

Leseprobe

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...
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Autor

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.Jane Commane is a poet, editor and publisher. Her first full-length collection, Assembly Lines, was published by Bloodaxe in 2018. A graduate of the Warwick Writing Programme, for a decade she also worked in museums and archives and in 2016 she was chosen to join Writing West Midlands' Room 204 writer development programme Jane is editor at Nine Arches Press, co-editor of Under the Radar magazine, and is co-author, with Jo Bell, of How to Be a Poet, a creative writing handbook (Nine Arches Press).In 2017, she was awarded a Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship. In 2019, Jane was commissioned by Historic England and the Poetry Society as part of the Where Light Falls project to write a poem alongside community groups which was projected onto the ruins of Coventry Cathedral and viewed by over 15,000 people over three nights as part of a music, poetry and light installation.