A success, sonnet and authenticity

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.

Iamb, stressed or unstressed, that is the question!

I seem to have been doing a lot of writing and putting documents together but none of it poetry!  I had things to
prepare for an AGM of Mothers' Union branch which I am leader of, as well as preparing items for a display to do with National Marriage Week which starts on 7th February.

I haven't been in the mood for writing poetry.  However, poetry class was interesting on Thursday.  We looked at  meter - all those stressed and unstressed syllables and by the end we were all stressed!  Even our tutor who spent months studying this stuff finds it hard!  I feel a lot better about my lack of understanding of it myself now. We all attempted a two line iambic pentameter and looked at Sonnet 18, Shakespeare's famous Shall I compare thee to a summer's day and we had a copy of part of Milton's Paradise Lost (thankfully we didn't have to read it!).  Basically, iambic pentameter is five iambic feet (five beats or stresses per line (foot) - it's the dum-di-dum-di-dum-di-dum sort of rhythm. There are variations of stress which all have names like trochee, anapest, dactyl and spondee and there are different feet length.  Because I am by no means an expert I'll refer you to other places if you would like to get to grips with this.  Firstly, a book by Stephen Fry called The Ode Less Travelled, well worth a read.  Try this website but there are many more.  The sign used over a stressed syllable is a dash - or a slash / and unstressed syllables have a u above them.  Here is another website which may be helpful using Sonnet 18 as an example.  Good luck!  At class we will be looking at Sonnets in a couple of weeks, so revisiting this nightmare, ha, ha.  Meantime, next week we are to take in a poem to workshop.