Arvon Courses and writing exercises

Last week I was lucky enough to go on an Arvon course at Lumb Bank with tutors Philip Gross and Colette Bryce. The place is stunningly beautiful and we were lucky enough to have glorious sunshine every day. Philip and Colette are both excellent writers an d as you might expect the course was varied and inspiring. By the end of the week I felt like I had really clicked into full on writing mode. My only regret is that the course was not longer - I think I needed a couple of days at the end just to solidly write and edit. It is so easy to lose momentum once back in the world of the everyday and the internet. I have only been home a day or so and already I can feel my writing mind receding somewhat. I can really appreciate the benefits now of writing retreats and might endeavour to save up for one. Just a few days where I can solidly work on my collection without any distractions.

On the plus side I have two completed poems and the beginnings of several others - well more than beginnings but they still need some major editing.  One of them was written mostly in a workshop at Lumb Bank. It is amazing how sometime doing a set exercise can inspire you to write something you wouldn't have written otherwise and on a subject you might not have necessarily chosen for yourself. For the exercise we were all given three slips of paper and told to write a word on each. The slips were then arranged on a table in the next room and we walked round the table and chose a word which we then went away and wrote about. The word I chose was water.

I think one of the other reasons the course was so inspiring was the high calibre of the other poets - I think that we were exceptionally luck that we had a wide age range and some really talented writers. It was similar to when I was doing my MA in that when you are with talented and inspiring writers it makes you step up your game and work that bit harder.

Hollyhock

That day my heart was a Hollyhock:

a deep flash of red

blooming on a pale stem.

Narrative Sequence

I am thinking about the narrative sequence, which seems a little ridiculous given that I am hardly writing any poems at the moment. But I am looking at them in preparation for the Arvon course I am going on next week. I don't think that there is much of a narrative sequence in my own poems - except for the prose poems, which definitely do go together - although at the moment I would say that they are a collection of poems about the same family rather than a sequence with any kind of logical order.

One of the recommended texts for the course is "Wild Iris" by Louise Gluck which, I am re-reading at the moment. I am not sure that I like the collection as much as some of her other work and it is hard to pin-point why exactly. I think it is maybe that her themes for the collection (apart from flowers) are the biggies - life, death, god etc, and although I know that most poetry (my own included) does cover these topics in some way, books that set out to look at them from the start often feel like hard work to read. Maybe I just like my poetry a bit closer to something real - as I said I don't know what it is I don't quite like about them.

I am wishing that I had a more portable copy of "Deepstep Come Shining" by C.D. Wright that I could take with me. Deepstep is one of my favourite narrative sequences (along with "Dart" by Alice Oswald) - what I like about both those books is the freshness of voice and the way the bigger subjects are in there along side very ordinary mundane day to day stuff. Both sequences also have strong voices, which is maybe something that I feel is lacking in "The Wild Iris".

It will be interesting to see how the tutors get us to look at sequences in regard to our own work. I haven't avoided writing one but just have not felt compelled to write for long periods on one subject. I suppose the closest I came was all the childhood poems that I wrote when I was doing my degree at the Art School.

Writer's Block

I am having a bit of a writing block at the moment, which could be in part due to my operation but not really sure if that is the only reason.  Whatever the reason I need to get back on track with my writing and just at the moment I am not sure how to do it.  Perhaps it is time to do some creative writing exercises...

The trouble with writing...

I have slacked off with my blog recently - not because I am lazy, but because I have been busy and I have been putting my writing energy into writing and editing poems as well as trying to send stuff out to journals etc.  My Easter resolution was to be much more pro-active about submitting work and so far this seems to be paying off as I have already had two poems accepted.

Yesterday I printed a bunch of poems out to see if I had enough to put together a pamphlet sized collection. I find it really hard to know what to leave out and what to include - there is very little that I like of what I wrote at the art school and even of my MA work there are are only a few that I am really happy with.  I wonder if I am too critical - the trouble with creative work is that generally as you evolve you go off your earlier work. I felt the same about my art work too and in fact I recently had a purge where I threw a lot of my old work away. I don't necessarily want to do that with my poems though, I suspect some of my earlier ones can be made better and maybe I will spend a bit of time trawling through them finding the ones that are worth saving.

Syllables and Endings

I have been reading The Triggering Town - Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing by Richard Hugo. I remember taking this book out of the library a couple of years ago when I was doing my Creative Writing degree but I can only assume that I never got around to reading it because I have no memory of the content - and I have had no feelings of deja-vu as I am reading.  If you haven't read it I would recommend it. I have certainly been enjoying it and will probably go back and re-read some bits at a later date.

One of the bits I found really interesting was about the use of single-syllable and multi-syllabic words in poetry.  I can't say that this is a topic that I have really thought about in great depth before. Hugo argues that multi-syllabic words have "a way of softening the impact of language" (p8) whereas single-syllable words get right to the point - they show toughness, rigidity, the warts and all world.  With this in mind I re-looked at again at a poem I have been working on - it is about dead things and starts off alluding to dead rabbits hanging on a market stall when I was a child - sure enough the first stanza which is all about memory is full of multi-syllabic words (remind, childhood, rabbits, muzzles, marbles etc), whereas the last line is almost entirely made up of single syllable words.  Obviously I am making this distinction unconsciously whilst I am writing. Maybe it is some kind of unspoken rule about the way we use language that is so ingrained in us that we do it without even realising. I am planning to look at some more poems tomorrow and see if the same rule has been applied. I suppose it could also help with those tricky endings - you know when that last line just isn't working and you just can't figure out why. I'm not keen on hard and fast rules about writing though so I think I will play it by ear!

The Ethics of Poetry

I am finding the latest book I have been given to review a challenging read. There seems to me to be a question of ethics. A few years ago when I was doing my creative writing degree someone posted a poem on the University Bulletin board about "chavs" - I can't remember much about it now except that it was quite derogatory. What I do remember though is the massive debate that ensued about the ethics of writing and posting such a poem, the uncomfortableness of humour at someone else's expense (something that is more acceptable in stand-up comedy but less so on the page), the judgement that is both made and invited when one produces such a poem. The general consensus seemed to be that it was not acceptable.

Therein lies the problem with the collection I am reading at the moment. The poet has written a series of poems about the seamier side of society but the very writing (and reading) of them feels like a judgement has either been made or is being invited. It is an uncomfortable feeling - maybe I would have feel comfortable if the poet was writing them in persona but they are observations. I would like to know how other people feel about this.