Resolutions and Bits of Poems

I am doing well with my new year's resolutions. I have sent some work out - not much - but some. I have been doing my morning pages most days and I have started a visual diary too. I started the visual diary for two reasons: 1) I miss making art, and 2) I want to see if it enhances my writing. More creative stuff has got to be good right? I have also been trying to put whole days aside to work on my poetry, although I think it would be useful if someone confiscated my broadband modem on those days!

Today I had the bright idea of writing a small poem about writing every day and posting it on my blog - well realistically it won't be every day, but a girl can try...

Here is today's effort:


Memory fragments -
the way smells can take you back
and fill your head with words.

Creative Block

I once read an article that claimed that there was no such thing as creative block. At the time I wasn't sure how I felt about what the author was saying - I certainly experience times where I am less creative. Often these times correlate with other stuff that is going on in my life - I might be stressed, busy with work or preoccupied with something with that take up all my creative energy. I also have times of extended procrastination - sometimes I think that during these times my brain is working silently away on something. Before Christmas for instance I was thinking a lot about the order of my collection, it took up a large amount of my creative energy until I came up with a new order. Now I know that I need to re-order it again, and what is more I also need to produce some new work - but since I was ill over Christmas my creative juices seem to have dried up.  I have experienced these creative deserts before - sometimes even reading favourite or new authors isn't enough to inspire me. I know it will pass - the worrying thing is that I have a deadline to work to. I find myself longing for another writing retreat in Wells...

BOOKS READ IN 2012

111) Maybe This Time - Alois Hotschning (fiction)

110) Search Procedures - Erin Moure (poetry)

109) Carrying My Wife - Moniza Alvi (poetry, re-read)

108) The Storm House - Tim Liardet (poetry, re-read)

107) The Bridle _ Meryl Pugh (poetry)

106) Stag's Leap - Sharon Olds (poetry)

105) Swimming Home - Deborah Levy (fiction)

104) Open Door - Oscar Guardiola-Rivera (fiction)

103) Portrait of My Lover as a Horse - Selima Hill (poetry)

102) The BBC International Short Story Competition 2012 (fiction, short stories)

101) Cosmic Ordering for Beginners - Barbel Mohr and Clemens Maria Mohr (non fiction)

100) Unleash Your Creativity - : Secrets of Creative Genius (52 Brilliant Ideas) - Rob Bevan and Tim Wright (non fiction)

99) Spider Bones - Kathy Reichs (fiction)

98) Little Gods - Jacob Polley (poetry)

97) Burying the Wren - Deryn Rees-Jones (poetry)

96) Stone in a Landslide - Maria Barbel (fiction)

95) Beside the Sea - Veronique Olmi (fiction)

94) The Beautiful Indifference - Sarah Hall (fiction, short stories)

93) Pelt - Sarah Jackson (poetry)

92) Nameless Earth - Robert Gray (poetry)

91) Swift - Jennie Feldman (poetry)

90) The Book of Blood - Vicki Feaver (poetry)

89) A Little Book of Meat - Selima Hil (poetry)

88) Lunar Moths - Jo Haslam (poetry)

87) 81 Austerities - Sam Riviere (poetry)

86) The Polish Boxer - Eduardo Halfon (fiction)

85) Recyclopedia: Trimmings, S*PeRM**K*T, and Muse & Drudge - Harryette Mullen (poetry)

84) These Days - Leontia Flynn (poetry)

83) Tender Buttons - Gertrude Stein (prose/poetry)

82) Cobweb Walking - Sara Banerji (fiction)

81) Arguing with Malarchy - Carola Luther (poetry)

80) Clueless Dogs - Rhian Edwards (poetry)

79) Grace - Esther Morgan (poetry)

78) The Underground Man - Mick Jackson (fiction)

77) Wild Abandon - Joe Dunthorne (fiction)

76) Profit and Loss - Leontia Flynn (poetry)

75) Fall - Amy Newman (poetry)

74) For the Good of the Earth and Sun Teaching Poetry - Georgia Heard (non fiction)

73) Misadventure - Richard Meier (poetry)

72) That Awkward Age - Roger McGough (poetry)

71) A Light Song of Light - Kei Miller (poetry)

70) The Keys of Babylon - Robert Minhinnick (fiction, short stories)

69) 26a - Diana Evans (fiction)

68) Maggot - Paul Muldoon (poetry)

67) The Wasteland and Other Poems - T.S. Eliot (poetry - re-read)

66) Ramshackle - Elizabeth Reeder (fiction)

65) The Opposite of Falling - Jennie Rooney (fiction)

64) Occupation - Angela France (poetry)

63) Down the Rabbit Hole -Juan Pablo Villalobos (fiction)

62) Jack Straw's Castle - Thom Gunn (poetry)

61) Salt Rain - Sarah Armstrong (fiction)

60) Jo Shapcott - Tender Taxes (poetry)

59) Jo Shapcott - Phrase Book (poetry)

58) Jo Shapcott - Electroplating the Baby (poetry)

57) Best American Poetry 1997 - edited by James Tate (poetry)

56) Broken Things - Padrika Tarrant (Fiction - short stories)

55) Of Mutability - Jo Shapcott (poetry - re-read)

54) Best American Poetry 1992 - edited by Charles Simic (poetry)

53) The Water Babies - Charles Kingsley (fiction)

52) The Last Falcon and Small Ordinance - Paul Perry (poetry)

51) It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want to Be - Paul Arden (non fiction)

50) London Bridge - Simon Smith (poetry)

49) Anvil New Poets 2 (poetry)

48) Peter Pan - J.M. Barrie (fiction)

47) Waffles - Matthew Welton (poetry)

46) Before I go to Sleep - S.J. Watson (fiction)

45) Legato the Ju-Ju's Cure - Simon Parsons (poetry)

44) The Departure - Chris Hamilton Emery (poetry)

43) All That I Am - Anna Funder (fiction)

42) Glad of These Times - Helen Dunmore (poetry)

41) A Bowl of Warm Air - Moniza Alvi (poetry)

40) Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe (fiction)

39) Carrying Rain - Karen Dennison (poetry)

38) Carrying My Wife - Moniza Alvi (poetry)

37) Sidereal - Rachael Boast (poetry)

36) Mangoes and Bullets - John Agard (poetry)

35) Selected Poems - Elizabeth Jennings (poetry)

34) The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins (fiction)

33) Devil Bones - Kathy Reichs (fiction)

32) 206 Bones - Kathy Reichs (fiction)

31) A Smell of Fish - Matthew Sweeny (poetry)

30) Remember - Agnes Lehoczky (poetry)

29) The Dark Film - Paul Farley (poetry)

28) Flatlands - Victor Tapner (poetry)

27) This Line is not for Turning: An Anthology of Contemporary British Prose Poetry - edited by Jane Monson (poetry)

26) Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson (fiction)

25) The Book of Matthew - Matthew Welton (poetry)

24) Intimates - Helen Farish (poetry)

23) Domestic Violence - Eavan Boland (poetry, re-read)

22) Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen (fiction)

21) Stonepicker - Frieda Hughes (poetry)

20) Wintergirls - Laurie Halse Anderson (fiction)

19) Spilt Milk - Sarah Maguire (poetry)

18) Homesick for the Earth: Selected Poems - Jules Superviele with versions by Moniza Alvi (poetry)

17) Ariel - Sylvia Plath (poetry - re-read)

16) We needed coffee but... - Matthew Welton (poetry)

15) The Knife Drawer - Padrika Tarrant (fiction)

14) Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (fiction)

13) Wordsmithery: The Writer's Craft and Practice - Edited by Jayne Steel (non-fiction)

12) The Range-Finder's Field Glasses - Graham High (poetry)

11) Collected Poems 1968 - Roy Fisher (poetry)

10) Fiere - Jackie Kay (poetry)

9) Glad not to be the Corpse - Lydia Harris (poetry)

8) Appearances at the Bentinck Hotel - Tim Cockburn (poetry)

7) Divining for Starters - Carrie Etter (poetry)

6) Black Juice - Margo Lanagan (fiction - short stories)

5) Public Dream - Frances Leviston (poetry)

4) Birthday Letters - Ted Hughes (poetry - re-read)

3) Birmingham River - Roy Fisher (poetry)

2) Standard Midland - Roy Fisher (poetry)

1) Salt - Jeremy Page (fiction

The Beauty of a Writing Retreat

I spent five days last week on my own in a holiday cottage at Wells-next-the-sea writing. It was an amazing experience. My normal life is pretty busy with lots of different threads of things that I am involved in, plus I share a house with my 20-year-old son who is at Art School so my home life is often busy too. It was great to have time to just fully focus on my work. I found that I got into a completely different zone of thinking about it. I now completely understand why people go on longer writing retreats. if I had had another week or two I probably would have written an entire book.

I didn't however re-order my collection, but what I did do was generate a lot of new work. I already had a couple of new sequences that I had been working on and which I knew would change my collection significantly once I added them in. What I did when I was away was to write an entirely new sequence of about twenty poems that compliments one of the other sequences. I am very excited about it - I can now see that the collection is taking on a definite shape and isn't just going to be the best poems I have written over the last year or two - it will have a theme and a form. Now I just have to work out how the other poems will fit around the sequences.

Back to the Old Question of Order

 I am back to the old question of how to order my collection - having put together a pamphlet sized collection - I then expanded it to a full collection - however I knew in my heart of hearts that some of the poems weren't entirely up to scratch. This was confirmed when my mentor looked at it. She earmarked some poems to take out and some to work on some more and some themes that I could pursue further.  Luckily I had already been writing some new and what I consider to be more exciting work. I had been thinking that I would save this new work but now I am thinking that it will be the nucleus of the collection (along with the sequence of prose poems).

I feel like I have worked hard on this collection - pushing myself to edit and re-edit and pushing the boundaries of my writing.  I now have to reconsider my order. I had put the poems in a kind of chronological order - starting with poems about childhood. This I now realise is a little obvious - I need to be more subtle, to find other more tenuous connections between the poems.

Next week I am devoting a full five days to working on what I have - I am excited and a little scared. I will be away from the Internet and my usual distractions. I will be forced to face myself and my writing demons.

Essence and similarity

Sitting on a bus today I found myself wondering if you can write anything without being influenced by things that you have read to a greater or lesser extent?  Since starting my series of domestic poems I have been reading Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein, Species of Spaces and Other Pieces by Georges Perec and Recyclopedia: S*PeRM**K*T, and Muse & Drudge by Harryette Mullen. I had already read quite a bit of Charles Simic and Vasko Popa.  I am not consciously emulating any of these writers in my work, but I do believe that we are (at lease subtly and sometimes more so) influenced by the things that we have read - especially if we find them inspiring - if they speak to us in a language that excites us and that we can relate to.

What is interesting to me is that some of the earlier poems in the domestic object series have a similar sound and feel to some of the pieces in Tender Buttons - and these were the ones that I wrote before I started reading it. This led me to wonder whether there is some innate quality in these inanimate domestic objects that is somehow tapped into and embodied by anyone who tries to tap into the essence of them through writing.  If you try to capture the true essence of an object is it inevitable that there will be some similarity to other work where the writer has tried to do the same thing?  Does this similarity make the work any less valid?

Object Relationships

So today my Friday creative class started again, and in keeping with my current obsession we had a session about domestic and household objects and how they can be used in poetry and prose.  One of the poems we looked at was "Fork" by Charles Simic which drew a mixed reaction form the students.   - one of them described it as being slightly sinister because it seemed to be turning the hand into something  horrible.

I like the possibility that the object can act upon or change its user. Usually we view inanimate objects as being  passive - they are used by us for our own ends. We might change the object but we don't usually expect the object to change us.  It left me wondering do we act on the object or does the object act on us? What if we are changed in some way by picking up and object and using it? Do we become the object or an extension of the object when we pick it up, or does it become part of, or an extension of, us?  And if the object does change us then do we remain changed once we put it down again, and if so how long does the change last for - is it permanent?  What is our relationship to the object? Does it have one with us?