Poems, Poems, Everywhere

Rite Poem

We are grateful to NZ performance poet Keith Thorsen (see keith_thorsen.rtf) for permission to use this material. 

WRITING POETRY

Some Practical Suggestions 

By Keith Thorsen 

Collecting Wild Poetry

The sounds, images, rhythms, smells of your home, streets, school, friends, the mass media, are poetry in the wild. 

Collect it in notebooks.  Carry these with you.  Note down anything that you find interesting. 

An item on the news, a sign on the side of a shop, a voice shouting in anger, a snatch of a song, driving home on a stormy night, the pungent smell of onions on a takeaway grill. 

The more you collect the better.  You won’t use it all.  I use about 15-20%of what I collect.  20% of ten notebooks is going to be better than 20%of half a notebook because you have more to select from. 

You will get better at collecting material the more you do it.  Become an eavesdropper.  I go into a cafeteria and listen.  If anyone at the next table is saying anything interesting, out comes my notebook and down goes their words and I use them in my writing. 

If you collect interesting material, you can use it to make interesting writing. 

What makes interesting writing?  What is going to make your writing stand out among the thousands of pages people read?  I believe it is the sting of reality.  The little details that stop your reader short. 

For example,  I get sent many poems by students about sad topics.  Often they lack impact. They pour out their emotion in gushes of very general words.  These simply wash over the reader.  But a student once sent me a poem about her little sister dying.  The thing that made me notice the poem was not the topic because I get sent many poems about death in the family. The thing about this poem was the detail.  One line in particular caught my attention.  The student said that after her little sister had died, every time she went into the bathroom there was 

"an extra hole in the toothbrush holder". 

When I read that line I thought of myself, she's not making this up.  This is real.  It had sting. 

The first question a writer gets asked is often, "Where do you get your ideas from?"  This often followed up by a comment, "I get stuck" or "I can't get started."  I think this is because people imagine that what a writer does is sit down at an empty desk, take out a blank piece of paper and start writing.  Taking it all out of their head, 

This is a difficult way to write, it is easier to go to your notebooks, flick through them till you find something that acts as a spark, a starter. The better you are at collecting material, the more likely you are to have the spark you need in the notebooks. 

A poem described

I often get asked to define poetry.  I think a useful description of a poem is:

image
image
image
image
image

The job of a poet is to make each one of the images as sharp, as accurate, as original as possible.  If you put most of your energy into the collection and production of such images, I believe that you will write effective poetry. 

Sketch Map Exercise

This exercise helps you build up you collection skills. 

Draw a rough sketch map of an area you know well, for instance, a local shopping centre or an area in your own school.  Make multiple copies of the map. 

Use the maps as location diagrams for anything of interest each of your senses picks up. 

Locate on one map all the smells you notice.  On another map the things your sense of touch registers.  Break up the senses that you usually rely on for your perceptions, sight and sound, into different categories suitable to the area.  Sound might, for example be broken up into people sound, machine sound, and the sound of natural forces like wind and rain.  Sight might be broken up into colour, the effect of light, and movement. 

When you come to write about this place you can start by selecting the strongest images from your maps. 

Dream Mind

You know that state of affairs when you are half asleep/half awake?  Your mind operates differently from when you are fully conscious.  Lie down for at least half an hour.  Words and images float into your half-conscious thoughts.  Get up carefully with these still clinging to you.  Write them down.  Sometimes you find the most original parts of your poetry this way. It is also a very pleasant experience. 

Wordstorming - Spinning Off from Your Starters

The collection of wild poetry from your conscious or half-conscious world provides the starting material for your writing.  The next step is to see what spin-off you can get from it. 

I use the wordstorming technique to do this. 

Write down a starter.  This can be from your notebooks or sometimes it be a sudden flash which you want to develop straight away. 

Then write down the next thing you think of, then the next, the next...... Keep going.  The faster, the better.  Don't stop to think, why did I write that, or how do I spell this or what does this all mean?  If you do that, make the process conscious, you stop it working.  You are trying to unlock the subconscious part of your brain.  Where all the images are stored. 

Give your self an hour, when you are fresh.  As you write, words will trigger actual memories.  They may appear to be side tracks from the original starter.  Follow them.  They often lead to your most interesting writing. 

You have to get over the reaction, "This is silly.  How can I possibly create anything interesting and worthwhile by throwing words at random at a piece of paper?"  It is precisely the random nature of the activity that produces interesting material.  Poetry needs to be unpredictable.  Each image should surprise, catch the reader off guard. 

If you use an unpredictable process to create your poetry, you increase your chances of surprising, firstly yourself and then your reader.  If you know what you are going to write at the start of writing your poem, you are likely to end up with a boring, predictable poem. 

Try to get away from writing down only single words. Move into groups of word phrases.  They are more likely to produce the strong images you want. 

You will use a small fraction of the words you spill on to the page.  I operate on the rule of thumb that I'll get one or two images that are worth saving from page of wordstorming.  Sometimes you go into overdrive and get several good images one after the other. 

Selection and Further Wordstorming

One wordstorming is not enough.  I select the images that are worth saving from my first wordstorming.  Then I use them as starters for further wordstorming.  I repeat the two processes as often as necessary. 

select
wordstorm
select
wordstorm ...

I'm throwing away the stuff that is now working and keeping the images that have sufficient impact. 

This selection and wordstorming I usually spread out over a week or so.  I find it useful to put the material aside and some back at it the next day with a fresh outlook. 

I'll show you how it works. 

I was in a school, leaping around performing my poetry.  At the time I had my hair spiked.  In a workshop afterwards, a student wrote. 

spiky head dancing 

I liked the image and used it as a starter for some wordstorming.  I wrote:

forbidden church stained glass window 

I had got on to the forbidden track because it had been a school where the students turned to check with the teachers as to whether my poetry was allowed. Then I got sidetracked.  From stained I went to:

stained sweat singlet running Hutt Valley Moonshine Rd
skyhawks and crickets strike zone my boys ten yards away 

An actual memory had popped up.  I was running in Moonshine Road above the Hutt Valley.  Early morning.  Just me and the crickets.  All you could hear was heavy breathing up the steep slopes.  And the crickets.  Suddenly, over the ridge into the valley came screaming four skyhawks, training planes from the Ohakea airbase. One moment there was just me and the crickets.  The next, there was me, the crickets and four screaming skyhawks.  They were so close. The noise bounced off the valley walls and I thought to myself, "If this had been wartime and this had been a strike zone, there would have been no time to reach out to my two sons. If they had been ten yards away it would have been too far."

Then I went back. From glass windows I wrote:

glass windows   old church  faded flowers  sun is a thief 
dust like fireworks  a riot in the nave  dancing in the isle 

Layout - arranging the words on the page

Once you have got enough images, you can start thinking about arranging them on the page.  Poetry does not look like it used to. If you ask most people what they think poetry looks like on a page, they will probably come up with something like this:  

		H__________________cat,
		A_______________mat,
		H__________________rat,
		A_______________bat.

		H___________________log,
		O_______________fog,
		H___________________bog,
		O_______________dog,

Lines beginning at the left of the page and starting with a capital letter regardless of whether it is the beginning of a sentence.  Punctuation used extensively.  Rhyme is seen as part of the deal and the lines are grouped together into verses. 

This is an oversimplified but reasonably accurate description of the way poetry in the English language has looked like for centuries. 

It is not, however, an accurate description of the way poetry looks like today.  Modern poetry for many years has changed from this layout. 

Modern poetry often does not use capital letters at the beginnings of lines. It doesn't usually rhyme.  It doesn't usually use verses with set lengths, or set line patterns. 

For many modern poets the emphasis has shifted away from set forms which are seen as artificial.  They look for the words first, the images.  When they have found them, layout is used as a way of making those images stand out on the page.  Whereas, before, words were forced into a set layout, now the layout follows the words.  The words drive the pattern. 

Poets and critics argue a lot about this business of form or layout.  The important point I am making is that poetry does not have to follow the traditional layout. 

It certainly does not have to rhyme.  My advice on this is to put most of your energy into finding the sharp images.  If you wish to rhyme, you can. It's not illegal.  But don't sacrifice the power and accuracy of your images so that you can rhyme.  If you have to make a choice between rhyme and imagery, choose imagery. 

Sharpening Your Language

Once you have got your words arranged on the page, take a close look at what you have got there. 

Look at each word and image.  I mean each word.  In fact it's not a bad idea to number them to make sure you don't miss any out.  Words like the, but, two adjectives when you only need one or none.  Each image that you have got.  Ask yourself three questions: 

1.	Is it necessary?   Does this word/image earn its place on the page? Does it make the poem work?  It doesn't, get rid of it.  Most 100-word drafts make stronger 60 word poems.  I go through my poems taking out this word, this image until I am left with the bones of the poem glistening. When I have done that the poem is more likely to work. 

2.	Is it accurate?  Have you found the words that say exactly what you want to say?  Check out your key words in a thesaurus.  Are there more accurate words?  For example, one of your images is of something falling. Look fall up in the thesaurus.  You find tumble, swoop, glissade, plummet, float.  Each of these words is more specific than fall.  Each gives a more accurate meaning.
	You can choose the one that is right for your meaning.  Always use a specific word rather than a general one.  They have more bite and are more likely to produce the image.  The word still has to feel right with the other words, of course. 

3.	Is it fresh and original?  Or is the language you are using the same tired old cliches we are dished up in the mass media.  Poetry needs to surprise.  The originality of you imagery is at the centre of poetry. 

A perceptive student put it to me that this comment about originality, clashed with my earlier advice to collect real material in notebooks.  How can you have both originality and the sting of reality?  Firstly, many of your observations can be of real but unusual things and events.  So although they are real, they also surprise.  Secondly, you can take the mundane, everyday thing and put it next to something it is not usually associated with.  The specific combination surprises. Or your poetry as a whole can simply be a combination of both elements, the original, fresh imagery and the collected sting of reality.  The clash between the two elements can be a central part of your writing. 

You have to step out of the normal way of thinking to achieve originality. I was at a school and wrote " blue as the sky" as an example of a cliche.  I asked for something more original.  I was given "blue as the sky".  Then a guy at the back, thinking he was being funny said, "How about blue as a uniform?  Haw, haw, haw." I said, "Yes, I like that.  Walking through an afternoon that was as blue as a uniform.  Yes." He went, "Oh yeh? Oh yeah!" Why had this boy in a blue uniformed school come up with something original? He thought he was being funny, so he stepped away from the normal way that he looked at things and went someplace else.  Which is exactly what you have to do as a poet. 

Detail rather than general words

The most important single piece of advice I have is to get rid of general words.  Replace them with detail.  You could change the description of a poem given earlier to:

	detail
	detail
	detail
	detail
	detail

The images are details.  Not huge statements about the state of the world or your heart.  If there is one common fault I find in the poetry sent to me from students it is that much of it is too general. 

Two types of poems are, in particular, prone to this.  The first is the "issue" poem. 

Issue Poems

Typical issue topics are war, nuclear weapons, abortion, race relations and conversation.  These are often full of very general descriptions of the issue and the behaviour objected to or supported.  The poems are then typically rounded off with general statements of belief, and either a judgement is passed or a prediction made about the future. 

It's great that students are writing about these issues.  But your poems need to have bite.  They need the sharp detail to catch the reader's attention. 

A student brought me a poem that criticised cruelty to animals.  It was a series of questions and statements, all very general.  "Why do we kill animals?  It's not fair.  They have a right to live.  It's their world too. Etc, etc."  No impact. 

By coincidence she as sitting next to a student whose father was a possum trapper.  "Great", I said. "You two go away and have a talk about it."They went into a corner of the classroom.  The next moment I hear, "Ooh, yuk!" as one student explained to the other how the possum traps worked. Back came the student with a poem.  No longer a load of waffle.  She had six words, two of which were the title. 

	possum trap

	bright steel
	soft throat

I went, "Ouch."  It had far more impact than the general questions and statements she had before.  

And note that she did not do this:

	The bright steel of the possum trap
	bites through the soft throat of the possum
	and it dies a horrible writhing death.
	Aren't humans terrible?

She means all of that.  But she says it more powerfully by not saying it. Sounds weird but that's the way poetry works best.  It doesn't say it directly.  It suggests.  It uses an image to say it. 

She took the centre of the image, the contrast between the steel and the throat and let the image do the work for her. 

"Right in front of me.  Yeah, we went out for six months, she's going out with my mate and I have to sit and stare at the back of her head every day in maths class."

He has now given me enough detail for me to "see" the situation. 

"How do you feel about this?"
"Actually, most of the time I sit there desperately hoping she will turn around and borrow something and see how my face falls completely apart when she looks at me and asks me out again. But sometimes, I get really angry staring at the back of her head and I want to pick up a compass or something."

A particular image is given, It is more effective than the general "I feel really angry."  It is objectionable and powerful, It has impact, 

This example is about a broken relationship.  A similar need for detail exists when you are writing about a relationship that is working, General expression of warm fuzzies or declarations of undying devotion are not enough to catch the reader.  The small detail needed. 

Examples of detail

Here are some examples of detail in student poems I have published or seen. 

Quentin Jamieson instead of the general "this is sad" uses the image:

	the sadness of cold coffee
	creeps down my walls 

Hilary McConnell on a child missing her father:

make daddy's briefcase
	from your Lego 

Ben Cooper on frogs:

	elegant long-legged leapers
	with large globular smiles 

A way of seeing

The quality of your thought is, in my opinion, less important than the quality of the language you use to express it.  However, the perceptiveness of the poet is an important element in the reader's enjoyment.  I liked the perceptiveness of Victor Billot in:

	If Christ was crucified at Halfway Bush
	the people from Wairoa St would not attend
	they'd wait for the Government to take a stand
	they'd wait for the paper to outline 
	the reasons given at the time

Sharon McIlwee's wry lines:

	I banned double garages and housewives in suburbia
	and businessmen who refused watercress at social functions 

Matthew Hyland commuting:

	and you sit on the bus
	beside your brylcreemed future
	breathing paperclips 

	shiver 

Matthew Hyland on himself:

	I am in a festive mood, practising my pastimes of
	talking about myself and feigning tragedy 

Using language

When you paint you use paint.  You learn the nature of paint, how it goes on to the surface, its texture.  A painting isn't only about the content of the painting, what is being painted, but also about the medium itself, the paint. 

When you write poems you use language.  Poems aren't only about the content of the poem.  They are also about the language you use.  The way it flows. It's layers of meanings. Its sound. 

If you are serious about poetry you need to develop a feel for the subtlety and power of language and to use it consciously as a medium. 

Josie Johnston on war:	

Youth in khaki make Red
	"popping off for a cuppa at noon."
	popping off again

again
again
again
again...

The poet is consciously using language.  The second line suddenly bursts into a colloquialism.  The next lines repeat the popping with its underlying meaning of dying and then mimic the repetitive sound of a gun. 

Creig Black playing with words:
	
Too un, too realm too surreal for 
	the average personable being 

A last line about first lines 

Give them impact.  I couldn't resist Sharon McIlwee's opening line:

	I had a dream about peace and ambition and alfalfa 

Alfalfa?  I had to read on. 	

© Ministry of Education, Wellington, New Zealand (First published 1998)