The Cambridge introduction to creative writing
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Harry G. Broadman - Africa\'s Silk Road China and India\'s New Economic Frontier (2007, World Bank Publications) - libgen.li
| Writing Game F I ND ING POETRY Take a sample of unusual or idiosyncratic prose from an obscure source, which might include labels, instruction manuals, business memos, science books, magazines about arcane subjects, or even this book. Freely adapt the prose into lines, using syllable count as the sole restriction. For example, you might break it into three quatrains, each line of which is ten syllables long. Then, read some short stories with the same end in mind, only this time create a longer poem, again using syllable count to break the prose into lines. Acknowledge the source somewhere in the poem or the title. A I M We looked at how we can borrow the precise aspects of language from nonfiction sources in Chapter Five . Found poetry is a fine tradition. It seems like stealing. However, as TS. Eliot reminded us, mature poets steal. Writing is always transformative. Some people condemn free-verse poetry as ‘chopped-up prose’. 210 Creative writing This game shows you how to chop it properly Poetry, I said, is pervasive. This game also helps you to see the poetry in many different types of writing. Writing poems requires a similar excess of exposure in order to create discrimination. Once again a volcano vomits sky-high showers of ash, but there maybe a small number of diamonds scorched into being. In the same way, you will probably write a lot of poetry to get a little. For example, read this poem by Donald Hall called Exile (along with its footnote in NP 1753): Exile A boy who played and talked and read with me Fell from a maple tree. I loved her, but I told her I did not, And wept, and then forgot. I walked the streets where I was born and grew, And all the streets were new. The footnote tells us that many versions of this poem exist and a much longer version has appeared in print. Imagine the ash and scorched earth of language around these six diamond-hard lines. If we were to replay Anatole France’s analogy between carpentry and creative writing, the space around this poem is waist-high in wood-shavings. You might write and rewrite a lot of good poetry to gain something with which you are satisfied, even temporarily – and, even then, like Donald Hall, you might still change it. Nowhere is the editor’s razor sharper and more frequently in use than in rewriting poetry. When that razor is not applied, the result can be shovel-loads of scree and ash. Think of the scholarly editions of the complete works of any major poet and the diamond- to-ash ratio therein. Yet weak, leaden or plodding poetry is the path to good writing, even though the ratio between them might seem horrendous at first. One way to make this process more palatable for you is to make it challenging and even entertaining, and playing with form and pattern is probably the best way forward. Download 2.89 Mb. Share with your friends:
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