Guest Post: “I have been her kind”
"A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language." W. H. Auden
This is Myfanwy’s companion piece to They Fuck You Up in which she terrifies us all (okay, mostly me) by suggesting writing some poetry
What exactly is poetry?
Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. It [is] from emotion recollected in tranquillity.
William Wordsworth
Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.
Robert Frost
Good poetry captures complex ideas and makes them evident. Good poetry examines difficult emotions and makes them clear. Good poetry takes an abstract idea and makes it vividly concrete. Good poetry lets us embrace the gaps in our knowledge or understanding – that famous concept of negative capability (Keats).
The best poetry distils the essence of an emotion or a scene or a moment. Its language is often very pared; its idea(s) clarified; imagery sharpened in focus, its metaphors followed through; its similes strong, not cliched.
What can novelists learn from poetry?
What does reading – and more, writing – poetry offer a novelist?
Learning to focus on every single word earning its place. Do you need those definite articles? Those conjunctions? Could you restructure your sentence more cleanly? Would this paragraph make clearer sense rearranged?
As Robert Graves said, ‘There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money, either.’
That doesn’t mean it’s not useful word play time, plus rewarding when it works.
Send some poems out to zines and magazines and some will find a home. Go along to an open mic and share your best work.
The general impossibility of defining poetry.
Years ago, in the early throes of social media forums, someone asked a group of us to define a poem. We then discovered any definition will have exceptions.
A poem is an idea, an approach, an essence, not always an exact form.
There are generally accepted tropes, but many poems break them; there are prose poems and novels in verse (check out The Marlowe Papers by Ros Barber, a tale of Shakespearian England and spies), and so on.
If the writer says it’s a poem, it’s a poem.
Of course, the rest of the world – all the readers/listeners – may then decide if it is worthy of that designation.
It’s like free speech: you may say what you like, but you may expect others to object and say their thing too.
(And, tbh, poetry communities can be like than sometimes.) Stephen Fry (The Ode Less Travelled) referred to bad free verse as “arse dribble”, whereas I’m more inclined to flee from appallingly crafted bouncy end-rhyme, especially if the poem is about some supposedly weighty, serious subject (or belly dancers, but that’s entirely personal; thanks, Dad).
People get hung up on rhyme and form – or the lack of. It’s fun to play with both and to play with free verse.
Strict form and rhyme are restrictive, but that can be a creative strength (or a case of pick the first rhyme that pops up on the app and force the line to meet it – please, don’t do that).
If you are just starting out, it’s useful to find a critique group, preferably local (Stanza groups are great), so you get to know each other as well the poems (though online is good too).
I have learned at least as much by critiquing others’ poems as by writing my own. (And that may not be a lot, before anyone snarks, but it’s been fun along the way.)
Go to workshops; you may find a new way of sneaking up on an idea to capture it securely.
Go to festivals.
Also it’s fucking BRILLIANT for Procrastination.
What specific skills do you hone writing poetry?
- every word must count and carry weight
- brevity and clarity
- vocabulary
- metaphor and simile
- thinking about sentence structures and punctuation
In addition
- it’s easier to get the occasional poem published than any novel
- performance is addictive once you’ve tasted terror followed by applause
- linguistic confidence (however misplaced)
What to write?
The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese,
G K Chesterton
Modern poetry is diverse in form, style, voice, background and approach. It can be anything. Texts cut up; found poetry; sonnets; lyrics – anything goes if it works. In the UK a few years ago, generally there were “professional” poets (professional in that they made a living – though paid more for teaching than actual poetry, of course) who looked down on performance poetry, which was the space for those of “different” backgrounds – less academic and maybe (shock, horror) not even white – Linton Kwesi Johnson and then Benjamin Zephaniah at the forefront. Or John Cooper Clark and others in the punk and alternative scene.
Now there is far more of a range in every respect. The third placed winner of The National Poetry Prize 2022 is Black Country* poet Emma Purshouse, known for her slam-winning performance work, who also writes for the page (and for children, and a novel). Some of her poems are deeply moving, some are ridiculously funny, like her imagining a holiday in Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch with a car crash and trying to fill in the insurance claim form. Here’s an interview with her including poem snippets. And next is a link to her poem Feeling Low? (I have the words to this printed out and stuck on my fridge as a useful comfort after a bad day.)
Another recent page/stage prize-winner (globally) is Danez Smith, a black, gay, HIV-positive American who rages against the systems and discriminations there. Don’t Call Us Dead was my poetry book of the year for 2017 for its fierce honesty.
There are poetry stages at big music festivals and even festivals that are mainly about poetry (Ledbury Poetry Festival is my nearest – I’ve often taken a holiday from my day job so I can immerse myself in words for ten days.) Page poets sell more books at events so they have upped their reading game. Performance poets can also sell books so they have looked at how their poems work on the page – or on Instagram. Fashions change.
Forms and fun
Haiku are the simplest forms. Limericks are great for filth. Clerihews are best about the deceased.
One of my first experiences writing poetry was thanks to an OU taster workshop by Matt Harvey, who showed us how to look closely at almost anything and write about it. His poems include Slug, The Streaker and, as Wimbledon poet in residence, Thwok. His technique is not unlike that of the Norse kenning (knowing) poems, where a thing is not named but described in other ways. In Matt’s case, this is often very funny. Here he is performing for TEDxExeter.
Let’s finish with a poem by Anne Sexton, Her Kind, which opens:
I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.
There is fierce feeling in this, but also exact, crafted form, which brings that feeling even more to the fore.
To think about
Find some poems you like or that puzzle you. Let’s discuss them.
Myfanwy Fox -
Biologist now running a charity shop, interested in ecology, psychology and communication. Poet and writer of science fiction.
Check out her website here - Fox Unkennelled
Notes and a few more poems
Last time’s heading “They fuck you up, your mum and dad”, is the opening line from Philip Larkin’s This Be The Verse which is about how, “Man hands on misery to man.”
This was reworked by Adrian Mitchell as, “They tuck you up, your Mum and Dad. / They read you Peter Rabbit, too”, in the opposite sentiment with, “Man hands on happiness to man” – worth a google (as are his other poems).
* just to confuse any Fox News enthusiasts, The Black Country is an historically manufacturing area of the West Midlands in England.
A poem from Clive James
And one from Francesca Bell
and on a similar theme, a poem by Joan Larkin
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Her Kind – Anne Sexton https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42560/her-kind
NaPoRiMo
Guest Post: “I have been her kind”
"We then discovered any definition will have exceptions."
Yes, like definitions of 'art' or 'game'.
"- it’s easier to get the occasional poem published than any novel"
I remember a short story by Martin Amis set in an alternative reality where a poetry collection was the path to publishing prosperity, but a blockbuster thriller was really hard to sell.
I've just seen this shared by poet Ian Duhig on Facebook: “The poet is like a mouse in an enormous cheese, excited by how much cheese there is to eat.”
— Czeslaw Milosz