The Sound of Silence

We were looking at sound at my poetry class last Thursday.  Our tutor played three different pieces and then we wrote about them, what we heard, how they made us feel, what ideas sparked off.  We generally discussed silence - what is it, if it exists - and then looked at a couple of paragraphs from the book A Book of Silence by Sara Maitland.  We also read the poem Honda Pavarotti by Tony Hoagland which uses sound to describe what is going on in a most wonderful overblown way.

Our homework is to spend ten minutes on our own in silence and to listen attentively, then to write about it.  I did my piece this morning and realised that there is no silence!  Of course where you live may be quieter than where I live (near a main road) but even houses have noises. There is a difference between stillness and silence because stillness is something that can be reached within us.  It makes a good subject for poetry, why not try it yourself.

We also briefly looked at rhyme, full rhyme and half or slant rhyme.  So 'able' is a full rhyme to 'table' and 'tribal' is a half/slant rhyme.  We have only just touched on rhyme and I am sure we will come back to it soon.

I've had a creative spell over the weekend, and also this morning after I wrote my piece on silence I wrote a poem about the approach of December.  I may take this to workshop on Thursday.