I had the welcome opportunity to attend a poetry reading on 7th October at '
Deeds & Words Tonbridge - a festival of women's voices'. As part of the three day programme, two established poets,
Elisabeth Cook and
Rebecca Goss, read poems from their own published and soon to be published collections. Whilst listening to their stories through their words and looking at those present in the audience with me, I reflected how many people must write poetry but simply aren't published. If we all got published the world would be saturated with words, but would that be a bad thing? We all have stories to tell and we can all learn from sharing and listening to each other. Regardless of the merits of being published or not, it is great how writing poetry is so accessible to many. You just need a pen, some paper and the courage to write down some thoughts and see what happens. Granted, some people will be more successful than others on a first attempt, but there are plenty of 'How To...' videos online to help. With a continuous view to keep an open mind regarding the theories of poetry writing (I tend to write mine automatically, like a personal journal), I attended the follow-up workshop by Elisabeth Cook: 'Starting to write: A Practical workshop.'
This was a great opportunity to hear a poet's perspective and try out a different approach. First of all, as part of the warm up, she offered some lovely observations about poetry: '
It's really important that we do give certain experiences a voice and recognise that they do matter.' - '
Don't dismiss anything as not exalted enough to use in a poem. A
t the heart of it is observation' - 'Things observed in a certain way have a sacramental clarity', and finally, '
You discover your feelings about objects by writing about them. You discover meaning. Let yourself play.' So we did just that. We observed our surroundings (quite a bland and dark indoor studio interior), focussed on a few objects and tried to write around them. This was my creation (of no title):
The shiny cavern of the curve of the chairs,
are looked over by the lights
as if to say:
'It is by my might, not thine,
that you shine so bright.'
The bright light of the beams of the lights so high,
are looked over and across at by the wires
as if to say:
'It is by my power, not thine,
that you shine so bright,
your glory I deny.'
The power of the wires that are curled so high,
are looked over and across and up at by the scaffolding all around,
as if to say:
'It is by my might, not thine
that your power flights,
that your beams shine so bright,
that your curves are alight.'
At this, they all agreed,
the sound resounding back
into the background of this scene
so yet unseen
by you or I.
7 October 2018
Copyright EH 2018
As part of the discussion, we also touched upon line breaks in poetry, something that has intrigued me before whilst writing or retrospectively. She offered these thoughts: 'In poetry, line breaks are incredibly important, the line becomes something you see, a unit of meaning.' This has given me fresh perspective on the allocation of line breaks and I shall mull further both as I continue to write, and as I re-read ones that I have yet to type up.
