Poet’s Tips – Page 3 – Robin Houghton

Form/ 21/04/2013

George Szirtes workshop in Swindon

The sun was shining, it was a great day for a drive and even the M25 was a breeze. So my trip yesterday to Swindon was relaxing from the start. Actually I say ‘Swindon’ but the workshop was at the Richard Jefferies Museum which turned out to be a short hop from the M4, so I didn’t see anything of Swindon itself. But by the end of the day I had a clear picture of how the literary scene and poetry in particular is evidently thriving here.

There were sixteen of us in a cosy low-celiinged room, George in the comfy armchair and the rest of us fanning outwards in a kind of how-well-you-know-George pecking order, with copious amounts of tea and biscuits generously supplied by the lovely Hilda Sheehan of BlueGate Poets, our host for the day.

An interesting array of poets – I had probably come the furthest in terms of miles but many had travelled an hour or so, so clearly George Szirtes was a big draw. It was fun to get off of my usual patch, and always intriguing to ‘infiltrate’ a different poetry scene. Most exciting of course was finally meeting Josephine Corcoran, who gamely allowed me to take a snap of us on my phone (I think she came off better than me!)

The theme for the day was ‘form’ – we explored some of the elements that make up a formal poem – not specific forms (although we were asked to write a sonnet in the afternoon) but rather rhythm & metre, rhyme, length and so forth. George made the point early on that form isn’t just to do with the shape of a poem, it’s also voice – voice changes according the context, (which I guess is true of all kinds of formal writing, for example the language, the voice of a legal document versus a love letter versus a school report. In fact I started thinking about the word invoice and wondering about it.)

George talked about the frailty of language and likened the making of a formal poem to the patterns created by a skater on thin ice over a deep pond. There is something below, beneath the language, to be discovered. “Patterns can be difficult but there’s an exhilaration in executing them.” Language itself is purely a signifier, it’s not the thing itself. Rhyme, he said, is arbitrary – “language is not to be bullied into what you want – you have to listen to it…. there’s a couple dancing here but you’re not the leading partner.”

I particularly liked “most good poems are not the execution of intention but the discovery of possibilities…. with practice you develop an instinct about how you ‘fall’ into something, or how the poem moves along.” By being open to rhyme, but not forcing it, you are opening yourself up to new meanings, unexpected or surprising directions. George’s complaint about many competition entries is simply that he knows too soon where a poem is going – the poet hasn’t surprised herself – “If there’s no surprise in the poet, there’s no surprise in the poem.”

Another tip about rhyme: if you have two rhyming words you wish to use but it’s not working, try swapping the rhymes – one may be more ‘difficult’ than the other – try using the difficult one first. The simple act of a swap can achieve a different or more interesting effect.

Much of this for me felt relevant for all poetry writing, not just form or aspects of form. I think the idea of ‘being surprised’ is one of my biggest takeaways from the day. I know in myself if I decide to write in a specific form I can get bogged down with metre and rhyming words, without paying attention to the possibilities that may be opening up.

In the afternoon we had a go at writing a 14 line poem to a form introduced by George – not exactly a sonnet, but a 3-part poem: the first part featuring a room or a location where something happens. Then in part two, a shift of perspective – a turn away from the action in part one, to something happening elsewhere. We were encouraged to think in terms of camera stills. Then the final part not exactly a resolution or consequence, but a new direction suggested as a result of the first two parts. Try to improvise, said George, “listen… don’t plan it! Poetry is all hunches!”

We also discussed the reordering of lines, the cutting of early material when you might have been just ‘warming up’ (I find often this is true of blog posts… and to be honest, workshops also!) and the fact that different poets have used the same forms in very different ways – compare the iambic pentameter of Yeats, Tennyson and Gray, for example.

“Nothing is an entrapping as you think … forms are just instruments to play/use.” A day workshop like this is only ever going to be a quick skate over thin ice, but I did feel I took away some useful gems of wisdom and new insights. Can’t ask for more than that really.

The day ended with a sadly all-too-short reading by George from his latest book Bad Machine (l have serious title-envy about that one) which he admits contains much that was experimental for him. He’s a poet who has produced a vast amount of work and is still looking for new challenges and directions. Inspirational stuff.

Angst/ 25/03/2013

Notes from a workshop

Last week I was lacking inspiration, part due to work commitments and then a 3-day headache – ugh – so it was a pleasure to once more find myself in the interesting ambience of the Lewes Bus Station building for another workshop with Mimi Khalvati and the group of serious poets I seem to have inveigled myself into. (Can one ‘inveigle oneself?’ Hmm).

Sometimes in these situations I have a feeling of ‘this is not real’. I suppose it’s the usual ‘I’m an imposter and any minute now I’m going to be found out’ anxiety that I gather many women (especially) suffer from. A bit like jobs I’ve had in the past when I’ve sat in meetings and had the distinct sensation of acting like I know why I’m there, like I know what’s going on and my presence is making a difference. It’s not exactly the fear of being unmasked, like that scene in ‘Working Girl’ when Melanie Griffith is accused of being a fake and leaves the boardroom saying ‘sorry! sorry!’ It is something like that. But it also feels like I’m in a play, or someone else’s dream. There’s something fragile about the situation, grounded in nothing much. It’s like meeting a childhood hero in your kitchen or office. The strange mix of something that’s at once real and unreal. The feeling that it might be you who’s actually experiencing this or it might be something you’re dreaming or watching happen to someone else. And then wondering if there’s any difference.

Anyway, sorry for the cod-philosophical moment there – back to business – it’s very odd how sometimes in workshops there emerges a kind of theme. I remember a previous session where there were a lot of poems about water. And another where houses featured prominently. This week, dreams and fairytales came up quite a few times.

So in no particular order, here were some of Mimi’s general observations/comments that I made a note of … hope they’re of use /interesting.

When you have what’s basically a list poem, how will you meld together the various items on the list? If you use the same construction for each (eg active verb phrases like He puts out …. she ties together … they wait.. etc) it can get wearing. What’s the mortar that will tie the ‘bricks’ of the poem together? Maybe think about rhythm more, or bring in other tenses, sentence constructions?

We’re often told to avoid poeticisms, and yet one that sometimes slips through is a noun phrase that starts “what…’ as in ‘what stirred him at that moment was XYZ’ or ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’. Mimi says this is a sightly archaic construction – not something we tend to say in speech – beware.

General point on form – the structure needs to convey a thrill, just as much as the image or emotion you’re communicating.

Natural speech stress is not the same as metrical stress. When writing in strict metre it can be tempting to put in the little words that you might ordinarily leave out in free verse. But you can sometimes afford to drop the extra words and still keep to the metre. (This is something I need to work on – I tend to get drawn into ‘dumty-dum’ phrases if I’m not careful.)

Punctuation – it’s possible to be too punctilious! If someone is a fast reader, they may lose some of the excitement/interest if they are slowed down by commas or being too deliberately led. Specifying the pauses in this way can also put a big responsibility on those phrases to ‘scintillate’.

Inspiration/ 25/02/2013

Ted Hughes on ‘the problem with writing directly of recent experiences’

I’ve just finished reading The Letters of Ted Hughes (Faber 2007 edited by Christopher Reid). There is so much in this book that I’ve found illuminating and inspiring. Yes, there were quite a few detailed accounts of fishing trips which I couldn’t quite get into, and I’m sorry to say a fair bit of the erudition of Ted’s letters to fellow writers and his publishers did rather go over my head. But it’s an extraordinary window into his personality. I really felt for him as regards the whole Sylvia Plath ‘fantasia’ as he called it, there’s such a strong sense of him boxing himself into a corner from which there was no escape until he published ‘Birthday Letters’.

Towards the end of the book, Ted writes to his daughter Frieda, who has sent him some of her poems to critique. We don’t get to read his comments on the poems themselves, but his summary comments were, as always, very interesting. In particular, here’s something that really rang a bell for me:

The problem about writing directly of recent experiences is – the memory is simply too unfinished. And the feelings are still too engaged in the real situation. They are too painful and unresolved to say anything about. You can try – but they, those attempts to express those feelings, will always seem shallow, one-sided, exaggerated, false etc.

At the same time, they will find expression through some image that seems to have nothing to do with them – ie where you can deal with them because they are disguised. So your attempts to express the feeling of an experience directly, in the terms of the experience, will be blocked, false, cramped etc and yet if at the same time you wrote a story about witches and demons, or mechanical dogs, it would be full of wild feelings and and you would feel the release. The emotions of a real situation are shy, but if they can find a mask they are shameless exhibitionists. So – look for the right masks. Cast about and experiment. A feeling is always looking for a metaphor of itself in which it can reveal itself unrecognised.

When you find yourself writing directly about something that preoccupies you with rage etc – just remember that. A metaphor provides the escape route.

I love that – “a feeling is always looking for a metaphor.”

Poet's Tips/ 27/01/2013

Notes from Mimi Khalvati workshop

Yesterday was the first of our monthly workshops with Mimi Khaltvati this year, and as usual I came away with plenty of new insights and reminders. Here are some of the things Mimi said which I jotted down, as usual I’ve tried to stick to ‘universal’ comments rather than those to do with specific poems. Hope you find it useful.

On form/shaping/editing: Test out different forms, don’t just plump for the first way you’ve written something, which may be a bunch of uneven-length stanzas. Is that really the best you can do? It can make a huge difference – for example triplets can be more musical, lighter than big blocks of ten lines or whatever.

On villanelles – they need “strenuous thought”. You have to think backwards. You need to have arrived at a transformation in the last two lines, their meaning needs to have changed even though the words haven’t.

On consistency of register – if you use contractions (I’m, he’s etc) sometimes but not always, that will seems wrong. Beware mixing up idiomatic and archaic phrases, especially if it’s done to fit a certain metre or rhyme scheme.

On rhyme – ‘if you choose the wrong word to rhyme then everything goes wrong!’

On specific references to things the reader may or may not be familiar with: “it’s courteous as a writer to assume the reader is one step ahead of you. It also makes for better writing.”

On developing a critical faculty – ask of other people’s writing (as a precursor to asking it of your own) ‘what is missing? what more could be done?’ “A fierce critical faculty is a wondrous gift.” Be prepared to think in larger terms rather than just tweaking.

On beautiful language – it’s not enough to just write beautifully. Too much beauty can be soporific. (Mimi admitted literally falling asleep at a reading by a prominent poet – I couldn’t possibly say who – because it was all too lovely “the melody, the evenness of the waves…”). So how can you break up it up? You need a counterpoint. Look at what you’ve written and move things about if necessary – a strong start to a line can serve as a stake, a prop holding things up. You may naturally write beautifully – but your best strength can also be your weakness.

On tricky links – you can make ‘leaps’ (I took this to mean the idea of moving between seemingly unrelated images or meanings) – leaps are good – but they need to be ‘clear leaps’. If something is in the way, confusing things, you need to get rid of that, clear the way.

On developing a ‘forensic’ eye for syntax – check for missing subjects or verbs that change tense, confused constructions, missing commas etc due to long sentences with sub-clauses over several stanzas. (For me, this is a bit like writing HTML – every time you open a bracket or start a new ‘declaration’ you have to close it, even if it’s hundreds of lines later, with all kinds of embedded instructions in between. If you get something wrong the whole thing falls apart. But it’s so satisfying when you find the missing inverted commas or bracket!)

Poet's Tips/ 09/12/2012

Brendan Cleary workshop – drafting poems

Yesterday I was in Brighton at the Pub with No Name (which is incidentally in an area with a pub on each street corner as well as halfway down each street, so not having a name is pretty cocky) for an all-day workshop with legendary Irish poet Brendan Cleary. (Brendan is editor of the recently relaunched magazine The Echo Room by the way – worth checking out.)

We were in the upstairs room with the bay window in the photo, with sun streaming through and views almost to the sea. It was an enjoyable, intense, not to mention beer-fuelled, day which ended in me falling asleep in my dinner, but more of that later perhaps!

The day’s focus was on the process of drafting poems. We all shared how we went about bringing a poem into being, how we beat it into shape, what triggered a new poem, that kind of thing. We each workshopped a poem before lunch, and (very briefly, although we ran out of time) another at the end of the day. In between we started a new poem and Brendan guided us through a couple of drafts of it. With just five of us in the group it was pretty full on.

In time-honoured tradition (I love being able to use all kinds of terrible cliches on this blog – sorry!) here are a few of the tips, ideas and other gems given to us by Brendan during the day.

On tense: it’s OK to put something that happened in the past into the present tense – the immediacy can make it fresh. But be careful not to mix tenses by accident.
It’s also OK to change details of something that actually happened, if the poem calls for it. It doesn’t mean you’re being unfaithful to the spirit of the poem.
If you use brackets, or dashes, or lower-case ‘I’ or whatever, have a rationale. Every decision like that, every punctuation mark counts and you should be able to defend your decisions if asked. They shouldn’t be arbitrary. Every tiny detail of the poem contributes to the whole.
Whether you start a poem with a page of notes, a random outpouring or a particular shape or form, the first step of redrafting is to go through and mark the bits you consider to be ‘grade A’ then cut everything else. With what’s left, a shape may start to emerge. Be prepared to experiment with different line lengths, different stanza lengths, different forms. What you have cut out may not necessarily be bad, and the bits you are really reluctant to cut may be the material that’s stopping the true poem from emerging – be aware of that.
Keep a notebook on you at all times and don’t be afraid of ruining it!
If you draft in longhand, the quicker you get it onto the computer the better as it helps the process of de-personalisation. Look at the poem on the page (when typewritten) and consider the logic behind the shape of it, and the white space. “The white space behind the words is the rest of the universe.”
Don’t get bogged down with making sure people will understand your poem. Removing some of your authorial intention is crucial – allow people to make their own interpretations and decisions as to what it’s about.
Engagement – you have to engage with your poem, and think about how it will engage readers.
A poem can go in its own direction. That’s when you might get that ‘did I really write that?’ moment.
When drafting/re-drafting ask yourself questions like “What do I not need to say?” “Is this really 2 poems?” “Have I given the trick away too quickly?” “Do I need to re-order lines, or even start at the end?”
You don’t often add to a poem after the first draft, but you often cut.
Poems can be made from other poems, and they feed off each other. Go back to a successful poem, one you are pleased with, or perhaps where the form suggested itself naturally. Maybe you could write another poem in that form, or the poem may prompt another. (Useful idea when putting together a collection. Poem that work in isolation don’t necessary form a coherent whole, and conversely some poems only work in conjunction with those around them.)

Brendan also quoted John Berger when he said “Poetry can repair no loss, but it defies the space which separates. And it does this by its continual labor of reassembling what has been scattered.” Reassembling what has been scattered – what a nice idea.

After a few more drinks in the pub after the workshop ended, I made my way home to find my husband had cooked a sausage casserole, and he and stepson regaled me with everything they’d been up to. But I confess I was completely burned out and halfway through dinner suddenly I couldn’t listen to (or utter) another word. Call myself a poet? I have no stamina!

Mags & Blogs/ 24/11/2012

Getting published/entering competitions – tips from the experts

The weather’s terrible, I am a ‘music widow’ today and I feel the urge to reconnect with what makes poetry good, and conversely what’s BAD about the stuff I’ve had rejected lately. Yes, it’s time for some serious reading and some BIG edits!

I recently came across Tim Love’s excellent LitRefs Articles blog – and read again his piece about getting poetry published in the UK, a very useful resource, and it got me looking out a few other pieces I had bookmarked about getting published or entering poetry competitions.

For example, on Staple Magazine‘s website there’s Wayne Burrows’ lovely piece entitled Five Reasons Why A Writer’s Work Might Be Returned By An Editor…* (*…that have nothing to do with whether it’s actually good enough for publication) – read the comments too, they are entertaining.

Happenstance has a free download The Dos and Don’ts of Poetry Submission – to access it you have to go through a registration process and possibly input your credit card details (I think, although I didn’t get that far), although you’re not charged anything. I mention this article because I’m fairly sure I’ve read it on a blog at some point and found it useful even though it’s now behind a registration wall.

The Poetry Society has some useful FAQs about poetry publication amongst other things…

On the subject of entering competitions – on her blog, Abegail Morley recently interviewed Bill Greenwell about what judges look for in poetry competitions, and here’s George Szirtes’s interview with Ian Duhig on the thorny question of what poetry competitions are actually for… (George S is himself of course a veteran of the poetry competition judging scene, and there are plenty of his wise words on the subject elsewhere on the web)

And finally, a feast of tasty information (huh?) on Abegail Morley’s The Poetry Shed which includes an interview with Helen Ivory on judging competitions, ‘recipes for success’ from various magazine editors, and a bonus piece at the end about drafting a poem, by Kim Moore.

These are just a few articles I’m aware of – do you have more to add to the list – pieces on getting published or winning competitions, that you’ve found helpful/entertaining/informative? Do share – thanks!

Poet's Tips/ 12/11/2012

Mimi Khalvati on vowel music and editing with form

Our last workshop of the year with Mimi Khalvati on Saturday, and the subjects of vowel sounds and form were big topics. Here’s an extract from my notes, on the things that struck home for me this month.

Vowel music – paying attention to the vowel sounds of words (NB not how the sounds are written – it can’t be done by sight.)

Sometimes a chain of sounds emerges and this can reveal something about the emotional feel of it. Listen to the sound, what does it tell you? For example – the UH of but, come, cup etc can have an up-in-the-air feeling, a feeling of wonder, whereas the short I sounds of pin, trip, kin, can sound excitable, light. Think of the longer vowel sounds and diphthongs of peel, need, close, bows, low, ground – in being longer they are more settled, grounded, slowing down.

Working with vowel sounds is a good critical tool – sometimes you can hit on the right sound but it’s the wrong word. This is a common problem – you can’t let the word go, because you know there’s something right about it, but you don’t know why it still seems wrong. Lots of things sound similar, you have to work through other words with the same sound.

Still thinking about sounds – if you use a foreign name or word, should you worry about people not reading it with the right pronunciation, and thereby spoiling their ‘hearing’ of the poem? Mimi says you should trust a ‘good reader’ to make the right call and go with it. ‘Don’t write for bad readers!’

Form – when the form doesn’t quite work you must wonder about it. Form is an unforgiving editing tool. Go through and look where you’ve put line breaks, enjambments, stanza length, anything that sticks out (eg a strong, unintentional rhyming couplet in the middle of free verse) and try playing with the form, stanza and line length etc.
On the other hand, don’t force your poem into a specific form if it doesn’t quite fit, eg by ‘padding’ in order for the metre to be correct. Trust in the direction the poem is going and don’t be wedded to an idea if the language suggests otherwise.

Poet's Tips/ 24/10/2012

More Mimi tips

Here’s my round up of tips from Mimi Khalvati as recorded in my notebook on Saturday…. yours to do with as you see fit!

On the subject of clarity and coherence (does one need it? should one worry about it?) Similes are clearer than metaphors, if that’s what you’re aiming for. Mimi’s advice is to use similes ‘to see where you can go’ with the subject, and find the metaphors from that. Then you might want to ditch the similes. It’s a form of distillation/crystaliisation – taking your material and distilling from it the good metaphors. This is what might make it fresh, particularly if your topic is one that’s been done many times before.
On too much narrative – you don’t have to ‘situate’ everything. Less of a story, more intense, is what you need to make it a poem.
On internal rhyme – there’s nothing magic about it, it’s just English. ‘It’s impossible to write ten lines without some sort of internal rhyme’. Ouch!
‘It’s terribly hard to write a simple, pure, love poem without it sounding trite.’ Pay attention to the sounds, every syllable, every vowel. Sometimes a single word will wrong-foot you. Keep testing it, reading it again and again to hear how it sounds.
The sensual, the intellectual, the emotional and the spiritual – which of these is to the fore in your poem? What’s the balance like? Something to consider. Intellectual (a ‘think’ poem) is more unusual, so might be fresher. Everyone focuses on imagery, so how about fresh ideas, new ways of thinking about something?
On titles – ‘let the title come from the opposite side of the brain to where the poem has come from’ – for example if the poem is a bit odd then resist the urge to make the title factual or explanatory. (I wasn’t quite sure about this but it was food for thought… plus I need all the help I can get with titles so I will bear this in mind.)

Poet's Tips/ 18/10/2012

Tips from Don Paterson

The Mimi Khalvati workshop notes I posted here recently went down well, so I thought I’d share with you some gems from Don Paterson. Don came down to Sussex for the Pighog Poetry Festival in 2010, and as a tea-making volunteer I was lucky enough to sit in on his masterclass. (Actually that sounds very grand – the way Don described it was ‘you can ask me questions and I’ll just talk’ – in other words, no workshopping or advice on individual work.)

Clearly the man doesn’t beat about the bush. I have to say I came away with so many great tips, and I go back to them OFTEN – I know I still commit some of the ‘sins’ mentioned here and need reminding not to do it! So if you’re sitting comfortably, here goes:

Themes, titles, general tips

The title is where you can put a clue as to what the poem is about. Once you stated that, don’t keep saying it.
The beginning has to grab the reader. You might actually start halfway thru the poem, so that the reader can’t tell immediately what it’s about, but wants to read on to find out.
Don’t make the poem too obscure though – sometimes you have to state what might seem obvious to you.
If your beginning is predictable then the reader will be one step ahead of you – BORING.
Don’t start at the beginning with an exposition – first this, then that, then the conclusion – boring!
Look at how the great poets do it. Frost, Hughes, Heaney. Then look at your own work, and figure out the shortfall – what’s the difference? How can you bridge it? (If anyone has the answer to this one let me know!!)
Don’t write about hackneyed themes – rainbows etc – there’s nothing new to say – similarly, ‘cool’ things that happen to you – leave them alone! Poetic, beautiful, heart-wrenching things – the poetry is in them, you can’t create another poetic layer, it will be crass.
Focus on ONE thing – write about ONE thing – it’s a common error to cram too much into a poem.
Often the one great idea/line you start with ends up being the bit you scratch.

Language

Cut out the unnecessary modifiers.
Only use rhyme if it’s necessary, if it’s integral to the piece – don’t add it on. Same other stylistic things – they must be integral, or not be there.
English is hard to rhyme, so consider half rhymes, or even just focusing on a few related (linguistically) sounds – eg cook, cod, recoup, dog, buddha.
Pattern the consonants – think about where they are made in the mouth and be aware of grouping them, eg voiced/unvoiced or fricatives or stopped consonants.
Use short words and long vowels – lengthen and emphasise the vowels, avoid too many schwas, eg words like repetitive or communicative don’t work well
Make your words sing, the line must sound good

And while we’re on the subject of DP, this video of him in some windswept location reading ‘Rain’ is one of my favourites:

Poet's Tips/ 24/09/2012

Workshop with Mimi Khalvati

Aren’t we lucky in Lewes? A bona fide A-list poet comes down here from London each month to offer her wisdom and help us improve our writing. And I am finally in! After a year or so of champing at the bit I now have a place, and enjoyed my first ‘official’ workshop on Saturday at the salubrious venue of Lewes Bus Station. As well as Mimi there’s also a fantastic line-up of poets in the group, so I feel really privileged.

Here are a few extracts from my frantic note-taking of Mimi-isms, in no particular order… (I know these sound completely random and out of context they probably are, but I’m partly doing it to remind myself of what was said)

Don’t say the same thing several times
Be careful when editing not to lose the tone, if it’s crucial to the poem
On line length, if you’re unsure: find an important line and try using that as your line length
Ask yourself “am I going this way or that way?’
If you aim high you have more work to do
Writing formal poetry is 50 times harder than free verse (I liked this one!)
You sometimes need to be bold and not care what readers think/feel
Doubt in the mind of the reader is good. Don’t worry about taking things too literally. Sometimes it’s a sign you need to read more, and read more ‘illogical’ stuff eg Selima Hill. If people don’t understand that’s their problem!
Avoid signposting (ie nudging people), plus a few more ‘over used’ words hit the dust (ask me if you really want to know!)
Try swapping nouns or noun phrases and see how it sounds – mess things up a bit – to stretch yourself into unfamiliar territory

Happy days!

Category: Poet’s Tips