BBC Get Writing Mini Course: How to Start a Poem
This course starts off very arty sounding, the type of poems it is talking about the ones that I don't want to write. It got better though and has given me some useful pointers:
Write what you are interested in - commen sense really.
Relax before writing a poem, don't obsess over the language but make it flow.
The writer of this course suggested that poetry was about three 'breaths' and the way they interact:
Logical breath - the breath you take at the end of each sentence
Emotional breath - The breath you take where you finish a verse. Each verse should leave you thinking, feeling some emotion. Each verse usually changes the focus.
Musical breath - when you finish a line. Either it ends on a good, musical rhythm or it doesn't. Good poems always do.
Often these co-incide, so you might have a musical breath, a logical breath and an emotional breath all at once. The simplest poems do this - ballads in particular often do.
A couple of suggested exercises include trying to come up with a poem based on a word and writing a poem based on the 'visual residue' left by a scene in a film or tv programme. Presumably this is not just the visual residue but emotional residue too. The final suggestion is write a poem based on a memory, strong impressions, feelings and fragments of memory from the past.
To sum up, the 'tutor' quoted Sylvia Plath who wrote that in contrast to a novelist, a poet must be "an expert packer of suitcases", i.e. they've got to fit a lot into a small space and make every word count.
I think I'll have a go...
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