Impressive piece. It seems so effortless for you to write so often despite painful content. I need to read it again. I'm wondering do you say your words out loud, give readings or are they silent pieces.
Thank you, Lesley. I'm afraid it's not effortless writing. I do start with pages of notes, in despair how I'm ever going to shape something clear and coherent and interesting from this mess, but once I'm surer about my content and get to paring down the over-abundance of lines I keep reading the poem out loud, again and again, as the sounds need to resonate as much as the sense. Strangely I think of them as silent pieces too, maybe because of what I'm trying to talk about - unspectacular lives, forgotten lives.
paring down! that's the trick! taking out all those extraneous words. wtaching for repetitions like tose two 'likes' in the last three lines of the first stanza.
it's a good thing to speak it out loud, the best thing perhaps, to get the feel of it on your tongue, on your voice, even if your intent is that it's a poem to be read.
when we start all of us are very self conscious about the end product. i like exercises that push people time wise, force them to write quickly and most importantly, without thinking! and allow themselves the freedom just to write, irrespective of whether what they get is 'good' or 'bad'. at the very least it's a frame work that can be worked on. that's one of the reasons napowrimo style exercises are good. there isn;t the expectation of producing great work but you will get a tranch of stuff you can work on.
my method? i'm lucky. i do write very quickly. it suits me but it may be for certain poems i have to wait a long time, do a lot of rewriting before i get them 'right'. i try to switch my conscious head off and allow images to escape out of my head. ekphrastic exercises can be good for this. it's all about finding your voice, writign the poetry that's right for you. a lovely process. mostly! lol
Swiss, thank you, that is really helpful. I get too attached to some of my images/formulations, and really it's too early in my poet-life to be precious about such things, if at all. Looked up the exercises you suggested (napowrimo and ekphrastic - they sound like words from a complicated and secret language), they do look interesting. Esp. the poem a day-thing (keeps the doctor away), have started today's. Merci again.
watch out for naprowrimo - it's easy to get pressured about the poem a day thing!
ekphrastics are good fun tho, esp if there's a groupd of you. like translation it gives you a way of seeing, of looking at how other people tackle problems, how their heads work, and by association your own! what you base your work on can be anything you like. i particularly liked the following napowrimo effort this week. it's an image i'm very familar with but the way she talks about it, the simple language had me back thinking about it again http://thisyearsblog.wordpress.com/2009/04/04/nablopomo-2009-day-4/
i'll most likely be using your shoes sometime this month - see if you can spot it! lol
Hi Marjojo, I hope you are okayish ... I'm back ;-)... I will have to read everything again, but can say I like it and also your drawings !And my day has come in the sense that I've really started now myself, again ... I've just started following a poetry course online, so that I learn something :) and get motivated again, and not throw away my notes :-D...Take good care, big hug,Joni
Dear Swiss, I can't wait to find my shoes in one of your poems! In the meantime napowrimo day 1 for me just over, a small flawed poem came out, nothing to write home about at all, but there it is and squiggles its little toes. Thanks for the tip. Joni - glad you're back in the world.
I tend to collect pages of notes before writing poems also which is why it's good for me to break free from all that for napowrimo! I particularly enjoyed your 'The Shoe' poem below, esp. the first stanza which I thought was really great.
8 comments:
Impressive piece. It seems so effortless for you to write so often despite painful content. I need to read it again. I'm wondering do you say your words out loud, give readings or are they silent pieces.
Thank you, Lesley. I'm afraid it's not effortless writing. I do start with pages of notes, in despair how I'm ever going to shape something clear and coherent and interesting from this mess, but once I'm surer about my content and get to paring down the over-abundance of lines I keep reading the poem out loud, again and again, as the sounds need to resonate as much as the sense. Strangely I think of them as silent pieces too, maybe because of what I'm trying to talk about - unspectacular lives, forgotten lives.
paring down! that's the trick! taking out all those extraneous words. wtaching for repetitions like tose two 'likes' in the last three lines of the first stanza.
it's a good thing to speak it out loud, the best thing perhaps, to get the feel of it on your tongue, on your voice, even if your intent is that it's a poem to be read.
when we start all of us are very self conscious about the end product. i like exercises that push people time wise, force them to write quickly and most importantly, without thinking! and allow themselves the freedom just to write, irrespective of whether what they get is 'good' or 'bad'. at the very least it's a frame work that can be worked on. that's one of the reasons napowrimo style exercises are good. there isn;t the expectation of producing great work but you will get a tranch of stuff you can work on.
my method? i'm lucky. i do write very quickly. it suits me but it may be for certain poems i have to wait a long time, do a lot of rewriting before i get them 'right'. i try to switch my conscious head off and allow images to escape out of my head. ekphrastic exercises can be good for this. it's all about finding your voice, writign the poetry that's right for you. a lovely process. mostly! lol
Swiss, thank you, that is really helpful. I get too attached to some of my images/formulations, and really it's too early in my poet-life to be precious about such things, if at all. Looked up the exercises you suggested (napowrimo and ekphrastic - they sound like words from a complicated and secret language), they do look interesting. Esp. the poem a day-thing (keeps the doctor away), have started today's. Merci again.
watch out for naprowrimo - it's easy to get pressured about the poem a day thing!
ekphrastics are good fun tho, esp if there's a groupd of you. like translation it gives you a way of seeing, of looking at how other people tackle problems, how their heads work, and by association your own! what you base your work on can be anything you like. i particularly liked the following napowrimo effort this week. it's an image i'm very familar with but the way she talks about it, the simple language had me back thinking about it again
http://thisyearsblog.wordpress.com/2009/04/04/nablopomo-2009-day-4/
i'll most likely be using your shoes sometime this month - see if you can spot it! lol
Hi Marjojo,
I hope you are okayish ... I'm back ;-)... I will have to read everything again, but can say I like it and also your drawings !And my day has come in the sense that I've really started now myself, again ... I've just started following a poetry course online, so that I learn something :) and get motivated again, and not throw away my notes :-D...Take good care, big hug,Joni
Dear Swiss, I can't wait to find my shoes in one of your poems! In the meantime napowrimo day 1 for me just over, a small flawed poem came out, nothing to write home about at all, but there it is and squiggles its little toes. Thanks for the tip.
Joni - glad you're back in the world.
I tend to collect pages of notes before writing poems also which is why it's good for me to break free from all that for napowrimo! I particularly enjoyed your 'The Shoe' poem below, esp. the first stanza which I thought was really great.
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