The University of the Self #33

Like Plums on a Branch

Image description: a Venn diagram - two circles drawn in black pen interlock. One has writing in it wich says ‘I am writing which is good’. One has writing in it which says ‘I am writing which is bad’. The interlocking centre says ‘I am writing’.

i

If my head is an overturned stone, then poetry is the woodlice swarming on it.
Poetry will disrupt sleep, meals and baths: conversations, a strict or sombre occasion

when it might seem wrong to wield a pen. I remember the poem that hassled
its way into my mind at a funeral. No, no! I whispered — which sounded

occasion-relevant, at least. I am not making light of a serious, traumatic occasion.
I am nowhere near as callous as poetry can be, though admitting

that it claimed the largest part of my head that day might make me seem
to be so. Words threw themselves at my brain like hail. I wanted to be left

alone — there was so much around me to process. I wanted the comfort
of a soft cloth stim, so I reached for my handkerchief. Of course, there was

a pen. I am under the thumb of poetry. I carry one, no matter where I am.
Its nib glinted. The poem’s nascence became a physical pain. I had no paper,

except the memorial booklet, its portions of unfilled space. It was Lockdown —
most of us mourners were outside. I was standing on the periphery, alone.
 
My head ached with the pressure of resisting. My fingers fought to answer /
deny poetry’s urge. I have, to my chagrin, ignored these poetical visitations

before. The Muse is abstruse, is a will-o’-the-wisp. Capture it or pay
the price later, in empty pages, hauntings and regret. If you let it overtake

your mind, then “[the] bewilderment we experience in extreme circumstances
[becomes] a state of mind oddly close to rapture (Hoagland, 2019, p. 106).”

Please don’t hate me for this honesty. I don’t mean to appear uncaring.
I just wanted to express how overpowered by poetry I often feel.

Allow me, perhaps, to justify.

Poetry is very much two sides of a coin for me. If I’m not producing work,
stress rapidly accumulates. I believe I have lost my means of expression.
If I cannot articulate / process what I am seeing / thinking / feeling,
I quickly become angry / confused / frustrated — I go catastrophic.

I’m losing my voice   aren’t I   I am going to forget
        who I am   people are going to forget who I am   and
        the urge to scream out loud    is taking hold   I cannot 
        be still   my hands must be filled   with actions   I am
        aware of the agony in my head   I must   I must

And if I am writing?    Joy  and  Fear   .   Ecstasy  and  devastation.  
In the subtle hinterland between each of these opposite places, is poetry.
During the occupation of this space, I encounter       
             urgency,
                productivity,
                   burnout,
                     fatigue,
                       obsessive hyper-production,
                          self-expression,
                             freedom,
                                truth.

               A way of being.

Muses don’t offer many second chances — if I don’t grasp these flashes
there and then, I forget what they were trying to tell me, am left with only

the hazy trace of them in my mind, not the words or form. Nothing remains
but the overwhelming suspicion something crucial has been lost. One poem

will even gatecrash another: say hey! This is MY party, or three come along
at once, like insolent buses. A poem will hide from you when you most need it.

You’re not the boss of me. I’ll take my own sweet time, it taunts. Poetry is master
of the inopportune. Poetry, more often than not, is a bit of a sh*t.


ii

Sometimes poems come to us in more appropriate places, like at a workshop.

Workshops are alchemic places, where    epiphanies / theories    about poetry
can be                         analysed / supported / discovered. 

Attending any workshop will hopefully   involve / inspire
the use of   interesting / original   uses of      
                            language / imagery / structure / occupancy
of the     page / captivating options of form.

We might consider                big / important / difficult subjects. 
We might be encouraged to contemplate our motives behind each of the    
style / content choices that we make.

Understanding    why / how   we write is a catalyst — it will bring us closer
to who we want to be as poets—

to our own    unique / authentic    voice.

Overcoming initial reticence, when it comes to discussing our own work, is greatly —
if sometimes uncomfortably — beneficial. Having to defend or explain poetic activity
serves to illuminate our process to ourselves. Having to fight in our poem’s corner reveals the parts of our practice which are    beneficial / crucial    to us — after all, our poems would not be our poems without each ingredient we saw fit to include.

Muse As Workshop is a tough overseer. You clock in at the start of your shift
and it expects full value from you. We must look deeply into our poetic selves.

O m p h a l o s k e p s i s        is a serious business.

Make excuses on your own time, it says.

So, I have grown more confident when ‘defending’ my own poems.
I take much pleasure in an unapologetic / rapturous / almost indecent     
joy of language — it’s  sounds / chewability / duality    ,
its    unnerving / enlivening  force.
When I am writing, words become an idiosyncratic superpower.
Every word’s worth (pardon the pun) has been weighed.

                “The trick is to find out what we know…own what we know…
                give it away in language.” (Addonizio & Laux, 1997, p.21)

In poetry, everything seems expressible. Everything aches to be expressed.

Life and writing are both informed by, and inextricably bound to, the “elements of the sensorium… [We are]

                held in a kind of continuous thrall.” (Doty, 2010, p. 3) 

Workshop surroundings sharpen our ‘noticings’. Poets are more than Shelley’s “legislators.” (Rich, 2007, p.5) We are — from beholding a pebble, the ocean and everything above, below and between — the eternal ‘noticers’ too. One could argue that a poet’s need to harvest inspiration is never switched off, though it might come and go with increasing or lessening persistence.

                “Our subject matter is always with us, right here,
                at the tips of our fingers…” (Addonizio & Laux, 1997, p.21)

Leisure cannot be taken when deadlines are to be met. A workshop’s artificially high
demand for input means that everything remotely inspirational must be gleaned.
You must be temporarily set to High Alert.

Can a poem — like winter strawberries — be forced?

It can certainly be ‘encouraged’. Aloow me to relate a an example of and attempt to force, when I experimented with a one-person workshop with myself.

I set out one morning, desirous of committing Noticing with Intent —
my phone’s camera and voice recorder acted as field equipment.
I waxed at length about two wrens I watched, nesting in ivy.
I took a number of photographs of the surrounding environment
(one of which was a photograph of blackthorn blossom).
I returned home, fully intending to write about the wrens.
Instead, I found my head unexpectedly breached by the blossom.
Perhaps my determined hyperfocus on the wrens opened a door
in my subconscious. Perhaps my inner poet knew better than I did
and just got on with the job behind my back. Either way, subliminal
poetic inspiration is an important side-effect of a poetry workshop.

It’s pointless to argue with Muse, and on my return home,
I let a poem inspired by blackthorn blossom tumble from my pen.

As our ‘eye’ looks outwards, it must, in eternal balance, look inwards.
Perhaps this is what poems truly are —
a garnering of the          expressions / conflicts / strange harmonies 
of our ‘inside-outside’ lives. Within each one is a small universe,
each giving voice to emotions, to nature, the desire to    describe / write. 

                “We see/ what we write/ what we see through that ‘curious drifting
                smoke’ of our experience. Looking more often, you learn to see more
                clearly. Reading more, you read more fully. Writing a word prompts
                other words, sentences breed sentences.” (Sansom, 1994, p. 65)

Workshops will hopefully help us learn how to, and grow more confident in, critiquing our own work and the work of other poets. We will become better
writers if we push ourselves beyond simply saying, I like / don’t like that poem
(though this is a great place to start). It does us the power of good to have to think
why. How has the poet / writer manipulated the form according to their own
specific needs? What is it about the imagery that makes the piece so redolent /
leaves you cold? What has succeeded? What has failed? Do we really need
those last two lines?

Let us steer clear of ever being too precious about poetry. Let us remain attuned
to a poem’s organic nature, as “I [too] hope to never idealise poetry — it has suffered enough from that.” (Rich, 2007, p.21) I agree that it can smart to find your baby
being poked and prodded about. It is hard to witness a poem you hold dear garner negative reactions. This is because we write and read poetry with our hearts hanging out, like plums on a branch, so ripe the slightest touch could cause them to burst. Sometimes you will feel that the poetry world is too brutal a place, but we all can’t
all like the same thing — what thrills one reader leaves another cold.

We must be considerate, constructive and courteous in what we say and the way we say it. We must remember that tastes differ. What is sweet for one palate can be sour on another. That we are reading / writing is ultimately the most important thing.

                “All writers I believe can be guided towards more authentic
                writing, though each of us develops in our own way and at
                our own pace.” (Sansom, 1994, p. 67)              

The culmination of your workshop session/s may result in   achievement / doubt / elation    and hopefully verse, as “[t]he imagination’s roads open before us…” (Rich, 2007, p.32)

Poetry is something we      love / lose / hate / rediscover.     Workshops help us harvest
what is essential to our writing. We carry inside us incredible works. They gestate —
we nourish them inside the workshop’s ‘womb’, and so our poems are born into the world, to live a life (hopefully) beyond us.

                “Poetry is alive because it knows it is mortal.
                A poem is a manifestation of affect, of life,
                desperate life.” (Young, 2010, p.166)

We come together for a while, for the purpose of workshops. We leave them
succoured / baffled / challenged / energised     and ready to move our work on,
beyond first drafts or filled notebooks. Skeleton ideas rattle themselves into shape.
Workshops are about putting in the hard graft — enduring the darker moments,
the self-doubt, the sleeplessness. Your notess will become, with work and confidence,
the poems you always wanted to write.

After the temporary utopia of the workshop environment, you are cast back into the  abstract / vacillant    hollows of the self-reliant writer. You may experience symptoms
of    withdrawal / loss.   The    sparkling / transient   bubble has burst. It feels
like a death that must be mourned.    Death is poetry,     I dramatically thought
to myself, when it hit home that the last session I participated in came to an end.
How poets like to pit their wits against such chasmal concepts!

All we crave, as poets, is a little immortality. Is that too much to ask? In the end,
I can’t help thinking that almost none of us are remembered, as a grain of rice in
a sack is only remembered by the five other grains who nestled around it —
and then only until they themselves are consumed. If we are to stand a chance
of writing the kind of poetry that will score us everlasting status, then it’s best we go to writing workshops while we are still alive, even if it means doing what I often do
becasue of money, time and acessibility — host and attend your own improvised workshops for one.

Sources

Addonizio, Kim & Laux, Dorianne. The Poet’s Companion. Norton, 1997.
Doty, Mark. The Art of Description, Graywolf Press, Minnesota, 2010.
Hoagland, Tony. The Art of Voice. Norton, New York, 2019.
Rich, Adrienne. Poetry and Commitment. Norton, 2007.
Sansom, Peter. Writing Poems. Bloodaxe, 1994.
Young, Dean. THE ART OF RECKLESSNESS. Graywolf Press, 2010.

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