The Cambridge introduction to creative writing

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Morley, David - The Cambridge introduction to creative writing (2011) - libgen.li
Harry G. Broadman - Africa\'s Silk Road China and India\'s New Economic Frontier (2007, World Bank Publications) - libgen.li

Finding language

Writing Game
M
E TR EA ND RHYME Write a poem of twenty lines in iambic pentameter, without rhyme. Then write a poem in iambic pentameter of fourteen lines in which you use full-rhyme. Finally,
write a poem in iambic pentameter of thirty lines in which you only use half-rhyme.
A
I M It is useful for any poet to get to grips with basic metres. If, during drafting of any of these poems, you feel that the rhyme or metre is getting in the way of the poem’s success, then consider altering it, even if that disrupts the metre and rhyme-patterns.
Finding language
Processes
Poetry is the opposite of money in many fundamental ways. On the surface, it does not make its writers rich or chic and, to publishers, poetry is a surefire get- poor scheme. As Robert Graves said, There is no money in poetry, but there’s no poetry in money either In poetry, the notion of success is extremely relative compared with other arts. Success can simply mean sculpting one perfect quatrain as Derek Mahon wrote wryly:
I have been working for years on a four-line poem about the life of a leaf;
I think it might come outright this winter.
‘The Mayo Tao (1999: As this poem indicates, quick gains are not made painting the room of a stanza. Other forms of compensation arrive eventually and nowhere else is the experience of creative process, especially drafting, more of a love–hate relationship.

Writing poetry
199
Poets place value on language above every other literary consideration. It can be argued that poetry is one of the crucibles, along with research science, in which language crackles and transmutes. As I remarked early in this book, the fastest-evolving species is language. Poetry sets its camps on the shifting dunes of language, and sometimes trespasses beyond those known borders. The flux and flow in language can create a sense of continual crisis when writing poetry.
Given these conditions, you will have to get used to feeling that you will not really know when you have got a poem right. You may sometimes feel fraught as the language in your poems reacts against itself during rewriting. However, as you will see, reading other people’s poetry helps you find such alchemies easier to understand, if only marginally more possible to control. But sometimes the language in your poem is reacting against itself because it knows better what shape it should betaking than you do.

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