The Cambridge introduction to creative writing

Writing poetry
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are brought to life through their choice and combination – and by chance,
especially the chances created by metre, rhyme and form. There is more to it than that. Poetry’s precision of expression, its accent on the sounds of language,
draws the writer taken by the clatter and tilt of words. As Ted Hughes said:
Words that live are those which we hear, like click or chuckle, or which we see, like freckled or veined, or which we taste, like vinegar or
‘sugar’, or touch, like prickle or oily, or smell, like tar or ‘onion’.
Words which belong directly to one of the five senses. Or words which act and seem to use their muscles, like flick or balance It is important you develop a generous lexical awareness, and a feel for the sensuality of words. This lexical adventure can sometimes lead new writers astray, tempting them with wordiness or obscure diction. However difficult they might seem to be, your poems should not need to hang on a gallery wall with an abstruse explanation beside them. Any difficulties we feel we have with poetry are usually difficulties of expectation and, sometimes, mystification.
There is no need to make more difficulty for the sake of it.
Expectations and mystifications are usually to do with the apparent
strangeness of poetry – for example, what we think of as its language, subject and address, and even the fact we write it in lines. Yet, poetry has no ‘special’
language or subject of its own, at least not anymore and it is not addressed to a closed circle of chosen listeners. Poems do not have to mean anything significant, nor justify their existence in social or political terms. As Archibald
MacLeish wrote in his poem ‘Ars Poetica’ (NP 1381), A poem should not mean But be’.
‘It should not mean but be sounds implausible if you are schooled to read poems as autobiographical or cultural documents, or as material for literary analysis. Fora critic or student of literature, meanings may indeed be readable into poems. There are illuminations to be had through a critical approach so long as it does not turn readers off poetry lead them into thinking that poems exist only for this reason or make new writers feel they must manufacture poems that fit a critical mode of reading. A bad poem is one that vanishes into meaning – Paul Valery. And worse still, and even more truthful in its devastating brevity, All bad poetry is sincere – Oscar Wilde. A poem, in its incubation phase, will runaway from you if you proposition it in this way. For any good poet, it is simply impractical to try and charge a poem-in-process with significance (I will not say a greater significance) or feeling (I will not say genuine feeling. Wrestling the words into place is more than enough to begetting on with.

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Creative writing

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