This Writing Lark

 

                                                         Awww… Shit.

                                                         This writing lark.

                                                         It’s like waiting all night in the freezing cold

                                                         eyes glued to the hillside

                                                         Praying for a glimpse

                                                         Giving everything

                                                         Everything-

                                                         to stay awake

                                                         to stay still

                                                         to bear the freezing ground

                                                         the rocks that grate my backside

                                                       Then suddenly finding I’m awake,

                                                       and it’s light

                                                       and I hadn’t even realised I’d fallen asleep

                                                       and my eyelashes are ice,

                                                       and my vision is blurred

                                                       and there’s a dark line in the snow

                                                       winding away

                                                      Until it vanishes.

                                                      And,

                                                      heart sinking

                                                      I know.

                                                     They’re the tracks of The Cat

                                                     he’s passed by in the night

                                                     It’s all been for nothing

                                                     Fucking for nothing.

                                                    That’s what it’s like---

                                                    to look, at these ink marks on the page.

                                                    And be so damn brimful of disappointment

                                                    for what yearns to be spoken

                                                    that I cannot find a way to say.

                                                                                                -Bridget Holding

Movement and Rhythm

In ‘The Poetic Principle’, Edgar Allen Poe says,

I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of beauty.

Poets out there will probably feel comfortable with that definition. Prose writers perhaps less so. But the line between poetry and prose is a blurred one, and those of us who write prose would also do well to embrace it.

Virginia Woolf describes how,

A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it ... 

Our job then is to transfer that life, movement, and rhythm into words on a page, that others may know it.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, in his journal, presents us with a fine example of how it reads when you do it well. This is his description of the movement and rhythm of a wave.

Aug. 13 — Heavy seas: we walked along the sea wall to the Kennaway Tunnel to watch them. The wave breaks in this order — the crest of the barrel 'doubling' (that, a boatman said, is the word in use) is broken into a bush of foam, which, if you search it, is a lace and tangle of jumping sprays; then breaking down these grow to a sort of shaggy quilt tumbling up the beach; thirdly this unfolds into a sheet of clear foam and running forward it leaves and laps the wave reaches its greatest height upon the shore and at the same time its greatest clearness and simplicity; after that, raking on the shingle and so on, it is forked and torn and, as it commonly has a pitch or lurch to one side besides its backdraught, these rents widen; they spread and mix and the water clears and escapes to the sea transparent and keeping in the end nothing of its white except in long dribble-bubble strings which trace its set and flow.

Wild words indeed.

Wild words have a broad range of expression, and vocabulary. The verbs are strong, and varied. They mostly stand alone.

When describing a person’s passage down a street, that person doesn’t just run, they canter, charge, and gallop. When describing their conversation, they don’t just talk, they squeak, they howl, and they rant. Strong verbs rarely need an adjective. Adjectives are used with great prudence.

As living, breathing creatures, Wild words are flexible and malleable. The wild storyteller plays with rhythm for strongest effect. A rhythm can be said to be a ‘regular recurrence or pattern in time’.

Wild words have rhythms, as varied as the gaits of the numerous wild creatures.

Rhythm can be achieved in many ways: including by choice of sentence length, by use of white space, by assonance, resonance and rhyme.

The basis of their rhythm is iambic, the di-DUM di-DUM di-DUM that spoken English has always moved to. The wild storyteller knows that when these rules of internal rhythm are broken without good reason, the result can be clotted prose, writing that does not flow.

Wild words play skilfully with listener and reader expectations, noting the effect that a change of rhythm has on those receiving the story. 

The Monthly Writing Prompt

Write about water: the sea, a lake, river, pond, or rain storm. Describe it, in poetry or prose, with precision. Look closely, and be curious. Can you reflect and heighten all its varying moods  through the use of rhythm in your words? 
 

Writing Poetry

In two of the Wild Words online courses this week, participants were asked to write a poem.

The few who felt poetry to be their drug of choice beamed from ear to ear, but the majority embodied the caged writer perfectly, as they froze and sunk in their chairs. The idea of engaging with poetry can fill us with dread. As writers, we often aspire to the lofty heights of the poet, but also, as one participant observed, poetry can make me feel stupid, embarrassed, because I don’t understand it. If I’m honest, I’m not even sure what a poem is.  So, poetry treads a fine line between being of the greatest worth, and simultaneously, worthless. So, how to face down your fear of the wild words species that is poetry? The first thing to realise is that it’s a worthwhile genre to practice, even if the animal that is your current writing project inhabits the far-distant terrain of prose.

Possibly because they are small, poems bring into close focus many of the skills that we want to hone as writers.

These include precision, clarity, metaphor, sensory impressions, rhythm and pace.

Writing poetry is useful because it’s like putting a magnifying glass to our processes as writers. All our fears appear in sharp relief. No wonder we don’t want to do it! Ever heard the saying -where there is fear, dig there? That was never truer than with poetry. Discomfort, if we can stay steady and work with it, is the source of greatest learning.

Choosing to write formal poetry, with its rules about rhyme and meter, is a great place to explore the ideas of ‘caged’ and ‘wild’, form and content in writing. Prescriptive guidelines may initially seem to cage your expression and limit the creative flow. However, it’s within your power to transform that cage into a supportive container and a gateway to freedom.

Go outside. Find something that moves, or is moved.

For example, an animal that runs, grass blown by the wind, or leaves swirled in water. Observe the pace and rhythm of the subject, until you feel those rhythms in your body. Then, allow those rhythms to move up and out of your body, to flow on to the page.

Play with ways of conveying how your subject moves: For example: do short or long sentences (or a mixture of both) bring it alive most strongly? Perhaps onomatopoeia - words that sound like or imitate the source of the subject they describe- has a role to play? Think of the ‘slither’ of the snake, or the ‘miaow’ of the cat.

You might even like to go one step further and create a concrete poem?

Try laying out the poem in the shape of your subject, and then see how this affects the rhythm of the reading.

First published November 2nd 2014