I have a Haiku being published in the next issue of Areopagus. This is my compensation poem (remember I lost a poem for their competition which still hasn't surfaced).
It is the end of the second term of poetry class. Two weeks ago I took in a Sonnet to workshop. It turned out to be interesting. Everyone loved it and my tutor said I had it spot on so I admitted that I didn't go by stressed and unstressed syllables but went by how it sounded and counted syllables. Even so, I had established a pattern (not intentional so it rather knocked me out!) with iambic pentameter regularly interspersed with lines of trochee (the opposite of iamb). Well, I never knew! I felt very proud I'd succeeded. My tutor said that I had worked my own way round the form and must have a natural feel for it (Wow!).
This week we spent quite a time talking about authenticity in poetry, what did it mean, how was it achieved? We looked at a Simon Armitage poem about being bereaved. He admitted afterwards that he had never been through this experience yet he was able to write it so authentically that the reader felt that this had been written from his own experience. I said that we write about life how we see it and that I have used other people's experience in my poetry. Not everything I write about is from my own experience, however I draw on my own experience, or how I see it, to express the moment.
I guess we all think that a poet (or indeed a songwriter) writes having experienced that moment and that is the authenticity of it. If we believe it, the piece written has been successful in its aim.
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