A List of Things I've Learned on Poetry Courses

I've done number of poetry courses over the years, so I thought I'd share some of what I've learned. In bullet points to begin with, although some of these will be worth a blog post of their own.

• "What if" applies to poetry as well as fiction. 
• It can be from the point of view of anyone or anything, animate or inanimate.
• Look at the scene or inspiration from a different than usual angle, or combine it with something unexpected.
• Know what your message is. It doesn't have to be profound, or mean the same to everyone.
• Pay attention to detail, but there is room to leave things open to interpretation.
• Sometimes poems go their own way - like fiction!
• Don't feel that every line has to rhyme, or even some of them.
• But if you do pick a rhyme scheme or form, stick to it - unless not doing so is part of the poem.
• Pay attention to rhyme, near rhyme, and slant rhyme - and make sure it's deliberate.
• Beware of rhyme crime! Avoid cliches, including a word just because it rhymes (whether or not the resulting line makes sense), and twisting the syntax of the sentence just to make a rhyme fit.
• Avoid outdated and archaic language.
• Use specific, rather than general, vocabulary.
• Using the senses will make it more powerful.
• Listen to it out loud - get someone to read it to you, or tape yourself reading it.
• Practice styles and types of poems you're not usually drawn to.
• Turn traditional ideas on their heads.
• Keep a list of poems you want to write.
• Bring in your personal experience, especially sensory details.
• If breaking the rules, make sure it looks deliberate (ie  do it more than once).

I'm sure I'll get around to blogging about some of these eventually, but for now it's mostly about getting all my notes in one place (as opposed to over six years' worth of notebooks).

March, April, May, June, July Update!

I've been quiet for a while. Not much to post about, although I have been writing a little. I've entered the Wergle Flomp poetry contest, and also the Mslexia poetry contest - I don't usually enter competitions with fees (not rich enough for that!) but feel the Mslexia one is worth it.

I've got a week's summer holiday coming up and am considering spending it on writing poetry. Possibly reading some how-to books since I've got a few I haven't read/finished.

Recently, I picked up a book of Sylvia Plath's work and I have to say I'm not a fan. ALthough it's the complete works presented chronologically so possibly it's only the early poems I don't connect with. I'm going to skip ahead to some of the later works and see if I like them better.

One of my poems sold last year shows no sign of actually being published, so I should chase that up. It's a glamorous life!

February Update

My copy of Stories of Music Volume 2 arrived, and it looks great. Now it's just finding the time to read it - I haven't even looked at the poetry-writing books I posted about last time. Or any poetry so far this year. I'm hoping to remedy that by signing up for a poem-a-day by email at Poets.org. A poem in my inbox every day might be just what I need. It would certainly brighten up the working day.

There hasn't been a lot of writing this month. I finished a poem, only to rewrite it from a different viewpoint a week later. I'm still not sure which way works better. Next up, I think, is to finish a piece that's been sitting unfinished in a notebook for the last six months.

January Update

I didn't sign up for an online course in the end. I've decided to do some old-fashioned book-learning instead, since I can do it in my own time and I've got quite enough going on already.

Book-wise it's either going to be Alison Chisholm's Crafting Poetry, or The Art and Craft of Poetry by Michael Bugeja, since I have both of those already. My Amazon wishlist is full of others, but I've already spent my Christmas money. Both have exercises in each chapter which will give me plenty of prompts to work with.

I received an email the other day saying my copy of Stories of Music Volume 2 is on its way, so I'm really looking forward to seeing that and checking out the other work. Some of it was sent along in the proofs, since contributors got to look at the whole section their work is in, but I didn't look at the other works or bibliographies because I wanted to wait until I could see the book as a whole.

Part of my first of January ritual is to clear out my old diary. This time I found the first draft of a poem I'd forgotten about, which was a good way to start the year. I've puttered with it since, and have had some ideas on how to develop it further, including a new title. Hopefully it will be ready to submit next time I have a submission day.

December Update

So I didn't do Poem a Day in November, or much of anything really. I've added to the store of notes and first lines on my phone but that's about it. I find winter a tough time to get motivated - it's dark when I leave home for work, and dark when I leave work for home. And December's so full of other things - work parties, present buying, present wrapping, seeing family, cleaning for family visits, food shopping, food prep... There's barely been time to stop and it's hard to believe there's only a week until Christmas.

Stories of Music: Volume 2 will be released on 10th January, and is available for preorder. Having looked at the proofs for my section, I'm really excited to see what the rest of the book looks like.

I've spotted a couple of free online poetry courses that I'm thinking about taking in the New Year. Sharpened Visions: A Poetry Workshop is run through Coursera. There's a new session starting on 2nd January, so a good way to kick start the new year, although there are at least three other session in the year. It wants four to five hours a week though. EdX is running The Art of Poetry, although it looks like it's an archived course with future dates to be announced. Both courses run for six weeks. I'm honestly not sure I wouldn't just be better of with a How To book, though - at least they're portable and don't send you spam. While I haven't had any trouble when I've taken Coursera courses in the past, last year I took an online poetry course (and I can't for the life of me remember from which site) and got dozens of emails every day - which weren't at all easy to turn off since you had to look in at least two different sections of the website. The forum interface was terrible, too. I bailed on that course pretty quickly.

I'd like to do something though, and the structure of an online course might help me to keep on track. Something to think about, anyway.

Poem a Day

It's that time of year again when novelists are doing NaNoWriMo and poets are doing the Poem a Day challenge over at Poetic Asides. I've done both in the past, with varying degrees of success. As in, I've completed NaNo twice but not with anything that's seen the light of day since, and I've never finished (or even got very far with) Poem a Day.

Part of it is the difference in the way I write poetry and prose. Prose needs momentum, words building on words. Poetry starts with phrase or image and is a slow process: first I brainstorm, then write out a rough draft with all the ideas in the right places. Then I tweak, delete, and reorder until I have a first draft. It can take a while to even get that first draft. Even poems I've written in one sitting have sometimes bounced around in my head for weeks beforehand. So while I can bang out a piece of flash fiction in a day, it's rare for poetry.

Strictly, I don't need to complete the poem every day. I could just brainstorm the prompt given out every day, and work on the poems in December. It feels very messy as an idea though, with interrupted thought processes as likely to lead to 30 unfinished poems as anything else.

So, I'm not sure what to do this November. I'd like to do something, stresses and strains of the day job not withstanding. I miss the feeling completing NaNoWriMo gave me, of being someone who could fit in writing no matter what.

Poetry Foundation app

I've been trying to fill my tablet with useful and inspirational writing apps, rather than games. There's actually not that much that's useful, outside of word processors or note-taking, but I did find the Poetry app by The Poetry Foundation. It presents you with a random list of poetry to read, although I'd prefer if it just presented you with a single poem. There's a mix of old and new, and if you don't like what you get, you can spin for a new selection. Definitely one to download if you want a poetry fix.

There are a few apps that claim to provide writing prompts, but I haven't tried any of those. Also several white-noise generators, which can be quite handy if you don't want the distraction of music. And, of course, I've downloaded the Kindle app so I can read writing books (which are the only ones I've downloaded). Probably that's more than I need - I never used to carry a library around with me!