Capturing the essence

 a photo by pupski on Flickr.

If you are trying to capture the essence of a thing in a few lines is this enough of anything to be a poem? I am not sure that it is. If you have a few short pieces together is this enough to be a poem? Maybe, but I am still not sure. Are these short vignettes more satisfying for the writer than the reader? Is it merely an indulgent exploration of the it-ness of things, or is it something more?

Today I have been thinking about vegetables - writing a series of small pieces: each one focussing on a vegetable, and each one short - maybe one, two or three lines long.  I am not entirely happy with all of them yet. i wanted to capture the essence of the thing, but not be too obvious. That makes the process sound a lot more deliberate than it was.  To begin with it was a little more like automatic writing - but that makes it sound less deliberate than it was.  I have changed some words that didn't sound right or that I had repeated too often. It was an interesting exercise. One thing I discovered was that the same words kept coming up over and over (hence the changes) and that overtly foodie words started to creep in too - words like sweet and flavour.  These words are OK in moderation, and the spontaneous nature of the pieces means that I don't want to change too much.  I think I will write a few more and see how (or if) they all hang together. If nothing else it is an interesting experiment.

More about the fork

Fork detail courtesy of George Hart 

To know something anew in language is almost impossible.  In art the idea of painting an object without bringing in your pre-conceived idea of that object is more achievable. In painting you can focus on the negative space around the object thus building the object almost accidentally.  You can also break the object down to its component parts, or you can focus on the colour or the light.  The very act of naming something brings with it,without our even meaning to, the whole weight of what we know about the object being named, and our own personal history with it. Natty Peterkin (an illustrator) commented that "in art you are constructing an object whilst in writing you are de-constructing it - breaking it down to its individual elements." Naming an object is an act of translation: we are translating the object out of its original form and into another.  And if we translate the name of the item from one language to another we are still bringing with us the weight of what we already know about it.

I have also found myself wondering if some objects are just so "of themselves" that they are harder to liken to anything else, or think of in abstract terms. For example, I have been writing a series of small poems about domestic objects - some of those objects I found relatively easy to write about, but others were really hard to get to grips with.  The one I struggled with most was the fork.  I found myself asking questions: what is the fork like? Is it like anything else? A comb? (not really) A trident? (a kind of fork) A garden fork? (still a fork)  A seed head? (maybe) A claw? (better) A telegraph pole? A tree in a nuclear winter?

 Forks can be changed in works of art - I have seen mobiles and sculptures made with them - but they are still immediately recognizable as forks.  For some reason it is really hard to disguise a fork, whereas some other objects can be changed more easily.  A friend recently showed me a beautiful silver bracelet - after I had looked at it for a minute or so she told me that it was made from silver sugar tongs - I could then immediately see that it was indeed made of sugar tongs, but on first look the sugar tongs presence was not obvious.

Does the problem I have with the fork stem from the fact that it is the most used item of cutlery? (at least in our house). I think that's why I found Padrika Tarrant's book The Knife Drawer so compelling - the idea that something so embedded in our culture and everyday lives as cutlery could come to life and turn on us is profoundly disturbing.

Unknowing a Fork

Surely it's impossible to write of a familiar object like the fork without employing all the language and memories and feelings and pre-conceived ideas that you have about that object? It is a familiar object - it is a fork - it is the epitome of your every day breakfast, lunch and dinner table. It encompasses years and years of what you were taught, of what you learned and what you know. To write about a fork it is nigh on impossible not to evoke its forkiness. To apply the principle of ostranenie is possible - making us look at the fork in a new light - but it is still the fork we know, just viewed from a different perspective.  You can't unknow a fork once you know one (unless you have Alzheimer's or a memory killing crack on the head).  Forkdom is inherent within us - the only way to unknow a fork would be to time travel back to babyhood to learn a fork in all its guises for the first time.

Writing the Domestic

Have been writing a lot of poems about the domestic of late - and I don't mean that in the houseworky, housewife, domestic poetry sense. But I am interested in domestic concerns - looking afresh at the everyday: rooms; houses on my street;  those overlooked spaces like cupboards and draws, sheds and outhouses.

Writing about such concerns has naturally sent me in quest of other writers who have explored this territory. Charles Sinic seemed like an obvious place to start as his poem Fork immediately sprang to mind, and someone in one of my workshopping groups recommended Species of Spaces and Other Pieces by Georges Perec, which I have bought but as yet haven't had time to read. What I have been reading this week is Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein. Stein employs ostranenie to the extreme - her writing about objects is both ridiculous and sublime prose poetry written in a stream of conciousness style. Stein juxtaposes seemingly unrelated, utterly surprising and often beautiful images, but it is quite hard to read too much of it in one go. I can read three or four poems at a time and then I need a while to process them, and I will often read them again when I come back to the book. These are poems that you can come back to again and again and they will keep revealing new layers of meaning.

At the same time I have reading a collection of poems called A Light Sense of Light by Caribbean poet Kei Miller. Miller's work doesn't address the domestic directly, but his language is fresh and inspiring. It is probably the best collection that I have read this year, and the combination Miller's fresh use of language and Stein's surreal juxtapositions has been really inspiring whenever inspiration has been flagging.

Getting Closer

I feel like I am getting closer to an idea of how I want to order my collection now and I have a working title as well. One of the most difficult choices is what things to put in and what things to leave out. I tend to find that I don't ever really like much of my work that is over a year old - but used that as a criteria for will go in the collection it will be very thin.  I have a body of work that I produced on my MA at UEA but I am not really keen on much of it now - and anything written before that is almost definitely out.

The only thing that I know for certain at this juncture is that my sequence of prose poems is definitely going in, and some of my poems about transformation.  The prose poems have a fairly unique voice and at one point I had thought that I might wait until I had enough of them for a mini collection or a pamphlet - the trouble is that I have flurries of writing them and then I don't write any for ages. Each time I write one I think that now I am surely done with them, but then a month or so later another one pops out.

Questions about writing

Arvon is asking for writers to answer some questions about their writing practice, some of which will be included in a new book published later this year. I found this a useful and enlightening exercise and thought I would share my answers here. if you want to fill in their questionnaire head over to http://www.arvonwritingroom.org/

How does a book or piece of writing begin to take shape in your imagination? Do you feel your writing is a process of inventing or discovering?


I would say that it is both inventing and discovering. Some pieces of writing come as an overwhelming urge, there is a sense of urgency that drives pen to paper - rather like an incredible itch that you just have to scratch. 


Other ideas bubble away under the surface for a while until they are finally ready to burst forth into the light of day - this quiet bubbling of ideas can take days, weeks or even years.


What things trigger your imaginative process (for example, significant personal experiences, particular people, places, objects, dream imagery, myths, history, etc)?

There are a huge variety of things that can trigger ideas for me. Travel is one and if I am feeling blocked I often go on a train journey to another town - I think it is the physical movement of the travelling rather than the destination that is important to my writing process.

Reading the work of other writers is another sure fire way of getting the creative juices flowing. I read a wide variety of prose and poets, but do have a few favourite poets that I go back to time and again if I want a sure fire hit of inspiration (C.D. Wright, Alice Oswald, Agnes Lehoczky).

Other things that inspire me are my own past, myth and fairytale - I could go on and on. Workshops with other writers are a rich source of material - and Arvon courses are great!

How do you work - do you plan carefully or explore in the dark, trusting the process?

I generally go where my inspiration takes me and then edit carefully later. Sometimes I have in mind that something might be part of a series but for the initial germ of the poem I generally go with the idea that comes.


Do you feel in control of your writing or are you responsive to the requirements of the work as it unfolds?


I am in control of the editing and of creating the right conditions for creativity take place, but the ideas themselves sometimes seem to come from some higher place. I can sit down with an idea of something and end up being taken in a completely different direction.


Do you write a first draft quickly and then revise it, or build carefully from the start?


I tend to write my first drafts very quickly - sometimes the ideas are almost tumbling over one another to get on the page. Then it is a case of excavating the poem from the initial piece. Occasionally a poem arrives almost fully formed but more often than not a lot of editing and re-ordering takes place before I am happy with it.


How do you deal with blocks in the writing process?


Going on workshops, reading and travelling.


Do you write in service of any particular values?


That's a difficult one. I am not guided by any higher religious or political ideals. My main object is to be true to the poem - that is that the poem doesn't have to be true (as in relating a true  event as it happened) but it has to feel true to the reader - a kind of universal truth I guess if that makes any sense.


I am also in service to the idea of refining one's art - I want to be the best writer that I can be, which is why I continue to go to workshops, workshop work with my peers and attend readings and lectures. There is always something more to be learned.


What have you learned from the practice of your craft?


Patience firstly - as a young writer I would dash something off and think it was the most marvellous thing I had ever written. Practice and guidance has shown me that time and editing can improve your work no end.

What is the relationship between the writer's imagination and that of the reader?

The product of the writer's imagination is what speaks to the reader through the poem.  The writer needs to give the reader recognizable anchors to hold onto and then they sky is the limit.

Do writers have any moral responsibility in their work, wider than fidelity to their personal vision?

That depends on your audience - obviously if you are writing for children you would temper your content accordingly as they may not yet have moral maturity.  I think I would largely apply the same morals to my writing as my life - actually that isn't entirely true - I don't always like the morals of the characters in my work - sometimes this is what makes them interesting and I leave it for the reader to jusdge them.

Transformation

I have noticed that one of the recurring themes in my writing is the idea of transformation - one thing turning into another thing or something emerging from inside something else. These transformations are not always comfortable. I am also a little obsessed with the idea of things being not what they seem - in my current writing this obsession has manifested itself in the form of poems where a human has animal qualities or is revealed to actually be an animal.  I am intrigued by the idea from quantum physics that we all contain particles of stardust from the big bang and the creation of the universe and also by Bohm's  theory of the Implicate Order which connects everything with everything else. "In principle, any individual element could reveal "detailed information about every other element in the universe." The central underlying theme of Bohm's theory is the "unbroken wholeness of the totality of existence as an undivided flowing movement without borders." (http://www.bizcharts.com/stoa_del_sol/plenum/plenum_3.html)

My poems are much more simplistic than this of course, but nevertheless it is a fascinating idea that we all have elements of other things inside us.  I also seem to keep coming back to the idea of alienation which fits with the transformation theme very well. The change and alienation within the poems is not as large scale as in "The Metamorphosis" - usually it is more subtle - someone might have the characteristics of a bird or be revealed to be a fox.