My way of working

From my garden

Working on new poems has me going one of two ways really.  Sometimes I am inspired - something has sparked off an idea and I work at it until I get a good first draft.  Other times I struggle to get going, especially when I am using exercises and sticking to the rules!   Take the latest assignment I am doing for Adventures in Form with The Poetry School.  Nearly every time (but some more than others) I read the next assignment I think 'I can't do this'.  I make a few tentative notes but still can't find a way in and feel despondent. Then suddenly something clicks and I am away. Why did I doubt myself?

I am now attempting assignment 8 and as usual I had all the same feelings.  The aim this time is to write an 'erosion' poem.  This technique (as I understand it) is to find a word and then gradually take off a letter each time you use it until you are left with one.  The example used was 'gravel', then you get 'grave' etc.  You can use the letters to make new words and even reserve the spelling of the letters you have left but I've struggled with this because I had to find a word first and then write a poem.  I finally I have come up with a line I like and have stuck with it as my word works with it. So this morning I completed it and will upload it onto the site soon.

Some of the assignments on this course have been quite weird!  As I said before they have been more about games with words to produce a poem using found texts, writing to the beat of a song, random line generators.  It is an interesting way of getting creativity into poetry as you end up with stuff you would never normally write about or using words not normally in your vocabulary.

I do hope my fellow students think my efforts are good - theirs have produced some excellent poems.