The Cambridge introduction to creative writing

Writing poetry
213
A
I M It has been said that poems are adaptations of your own experience. These two small exercises attempt to remind the writer how individual and strange is our relationship with words and language, and how a writer’s personal reading,
listening and writing are intimately linked within any poem.
Recommended reading
As with fiction, there is a glittering hoard of handbooks about writing poetry,
and the finest are written by good poets. In my experience, the leading texts are Michelle Boisseau and Robert Wallace’s Writing Poems (Longman Pearson, and Mary Kinzie’s A Poet’s Guide to Poetry (Chicago University Press. The former provides an excellent and thorough introductory text which does not confuse the would-be writer with mystification or false promises.
The latter offers a bracing and beautifully written introduction to advanced technical matters. Taken together, they provide a penetrating explanation and exploration of every facet of writing poetry, and a sense of progression in craft and art. Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux’s The Poet’s Companion (Norton,
1997
) offers a confident and thorough survey, and is especially strong on the choices of subject matter. Both William Packard’s The Art of Poetry Writing
(St Martin’s Press) and James Fenton’s An Introduction to English Poetry
(Penguin,
2002
) are lessons in writing economically, clearly and yet personally
about poetry, as well as having the effect of making the reader feel like they are meeting the possibilities of the craft for the first time. John Redmond’s How
to Write a Poem (Blackwell,
2006
) is a small masterpiece of concision, and has a very interesting take on the address and design of a poem. Peter Sansom’s
Writing Poems (Bloodaxe Books) has been a gracious guide for many new British poets. Mary Oliver discusses the precisions and voice of poetry in
A Poetry Handbook (Harvest,
1994
). This is a strong text fora writer with little or no experience of reading poems. Should you be one of these unfortunate many, you can begin to fill that deficit by reading the generous An Introduc-
tion to Poetry (Longman,
1998
) by X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. If you need further enthusing, you will find yourself immediately converted to the cause of reading poetry by John Lennard’s radiant The Poetry Handbook (Oxford
University Press, 2006). Two fascinating books from quite different figures will introduce you to the angular psychologies of poetic practice Clayton Eshle- man’s Companion Spider (Wesleyan University Press) and Richard Hugo’s
The Triggering Town Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing (Norton,
1979
).
If you are ever short of Writing Games, you will find an open mine of them in
The Practice of Poetry (HarperResource,
1992
) edited by Robin Behn and Chase

214
Creative writing
Twichell. Writing Games based on form and design can be derived from many books, not least The Making of a Poem A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms
(Norton,
2000
) by Mark Strand and Eavan Boland, in which these two excellent poets discuss and demonstrate poetic form. Paul Fussell’s Poetic Meter and
Poetic Form (Random House) is a strong introduction to historical styles and practices with distinctive examples. Ron Padgett’s Handbook of Poetic Forms
(2nd edition, Teachers and Writers Collaborative) presents, explains and discusses more than seventy traditional and modern poetic forms, with examples and variations. Jeffrey Wainwright’s Poetry: The Basics (Routledge,
2004
)
offers a rapid and persuasive set of demonstrations. In the brief but classic
Rhyme’s Reason (Yale Nota Bene,
2001
), John Hollander provides a luminous survey of verse and verse forms, with examples supplied delightfully by the author and Timothy Steele’s All the Fun’s in How You Say a Thing An Explana-
tion of Meter and Versification (Ohio University Press) presents a rigorous overview. The open-minded but scrupulous Poetic Rhythm by Derek Attridge
(Cambridge University Press) provides a strong introduction to rhythm and metre. Some websites allow you to experience other forms of poetry,
including electronic poetry (see Chapter
Nine
). The Electronic Poetry Center is the place to begin (at www.epc.buffalo.edu). Listening to poems read aloud allows you to experience and understand their full performance, but readings may not be available in your area. There are many websites for the spoken word, but for poetry the Academy of American Poets (www.poets.org) and the
Poetry Archive (www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/home.do) carry online recordings, as well as essays by and about contemporary poets and links to other poetry sites. There are many rhyming dictionaries on the market. Rhyme tends to charm through echo and expectation rather than clang. Therefore the most useful resource is The Oxford Dictionary of Rhymes (Oxford University Press, whose radical organisation relies more on indirect rhyme, sound’s sidetracks and echoes. Its lists of rhymed words not only blend traditional/ancient with modern/contemporary but also introduce place names and technological and scientific terms. Lastly, Preminger and Brogan’s New Princeton Encyclopedia
of Poetry and Poetics (Princeton,
1993
) is the definitive, brick-wide handbook for working poets – it squats like a bookend alongside your dogeared thesaurus and dictionaries.

Chapter 9
Performing writing
I found that it was quite a lot easier than I’d thought to get into the magic anthill – the place where people other than yourself might think you were a writer . . . There was . . . a coffeehouse called The Bohemian
Embassy, situated in a falling-apart factory building, where poets congregated once a week to read their poems out loud . . . It was, I
found, quite different from acting. Other people’s words were a screen, a disguise, but to getup and read my own words – such an exposed position, such possibilities for making an idiot of yourself – this made me sick . . . How would you ever know whether you’d made the grade or not, and what was the grade anyway?
m a r gar e tat wood, Negotiating with the Dead A Writer on
Writing (2002: All writing is performance. Style performs our voice. Our syntax and diction perform language. As we have discussed, the first pleasure of creative writing resides in process. However, a book once published ceases to captivate its maker in the same way the covers shrink around it making it seem a closed space.
The writer wants rid of something with which they have become over-familiar.
They wish to move onto another open space, another book usually. Yet, in its composition, the book was performed in the present it was improvised onto a page after practice. Performance offers another chance to visit that improvised moment. It returns them to your voice, places them in the ear or remakes them as sculptures or even film. This chapter looks at three performance modes:
public events and readings performance as concept and public art, crossing into art forms and the modes of electronic performance.

Download 2.89 Mb.

Share with your friends: