Start of Term
It always comes as a bit of a shock - the return to classroom schedules, even though one starts to feel the anxiety/anticipation/tension from the beginning of September at the latest. This morning went in a sort of blur of printouts and finding timetables etc. Then my three hour class this afternoon was the first of a new module in our MA in Creative Writing. The module and the MA are both new and have attracted students who haven't studied creative writing here before - indeed some of them haven't come by the conventional route at all which is great - much experience of life brought to be an interesting class. Interests are really diverse although no one attending today is particularly looking to specialise in poetry. Nevertheless poetry is what we are trying to write on Monday afternoons.
How can writing poetry help with prose writing? We had this as an initial talking point. Here were the positives:
poetry can help with close reading, language, and refinement of expression
poetry can foster precision, concision and accuracy of image
yet this doesn't preclude the power of quirkiness, eccentricity and individuality of phrasing
poetry doesn't have to be confessional - far from it. Adopting a persona - a central or subsidiary character from a fiction project - can create a powerful dramatic monologue which might just help you move your story on too.
Is there really such a great divide between prose and poetry? I've already mentioned that odd liminal form of the prose poem. I remember in previous classes (other times, other universities) showing sections of Anne Michael's densely poetic novel, Fugitive Pieces, alongside a sequential prose poem by Michael Ondatje, and a fable-like section from Jim Crace's The Devil's Larder. Which is prose, which poetic prose, which prose poetry? A richness of imagery and an attention to language are always there, whatever the genre.
poetry doesn't have to be purely image based or a snapshot moment in time. Verse narratives aren't so popular as they were, but they still have their place. Deryn Rees Jones' detective verse novel Quiver deserves a mention here.
Poems may come out of the odd fragments that come from but don't quite fit in to your fictional project. Whitman's phrase 'sparkles from the wheel' keeps coming to mind, although he was referring more to the intrinsic brilliance, perhaps divinity even of everyday labour. The knife sharpener causing small bursts of light as the sharpening wheel turns. But it's a nice phrase though - little epiphanies in the course of prolonged exertion. Could almost count for blog posts too? And in these teaching times, the more of those epiphanies the better.
How can writing poetry help with prose writing? We had this as an initial talking point. Here were the positives:
poetry can help with close reading, language, and refinement of expression
poetry can foster precision, concision and accuracy of image
yet this doesn't preclude the power of quirkiness, eccentricity and individuality of phrasing
poetry doesn't have to be confessional - far from it. Adopting a persona - a central or subsidiary character from a fiction project - can create a powerful dramatic monologue which might just help you move your story on too.
Is there really such a great divide between prose and poetry? I've already mentioned that odd liminal form of the prose poem. I remember in previous classes (other times, other universities) showing sections of Anne Michael's densely poetic novel, Fugitive Pieces, alongside a sequential prose poem by Michael Ondatje, and a fable-like section from Jim Crace's The Devil's Larder. Which is prose, which poetic prose, which prose poetry? A richness of imagery and an attention to language are always there, whatever the genre.
poetry doesn't have to be purely image based or a snapshot moment in time. Verse narratives aren't so popular as they were, but they still have their place. Deryn Rees Jones' detective verse novel Quiver deserves a mention here.
Poems may come out of the odd fragments that come from but don't quite fit in to your fictional project. Whitman's phrase 'sparkles from the wheel' keeps coming to mind, although he was referring more to the intrinsic brilliance, perhaps divinity even of everyday labour. The knife sharpener causing small bursts of light as the sharpening wheel turns. But it's a nice phrase though - little epiphanies in the course of prolonged exertion. Could almost count for blog posts too? And in these teaching times, the more of those epiphanies the better.
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