Advice for Poets

I found a link to this great list of advice for poets on Leon's blog. It was originally on Harriet's blog at The Poetry Foundation website (but seems not to be online any more).

I think much of this applies to all kinds of creative writing :

1) Write everyday. It's easier than it sounds. Make time everyday to write SOMETHING. Even if it's one line scribbled into a napkin on the subway or the bus, or a whole precious early hour in the morning. This practice lets the mind know that everyday we must be observant, that we are paying attention, always.

2) Learn poems you love. Read whatever poems you can get your hands on. Not just the classics, but those poets who are writing today. Pick up journals, magazines, and anthologies; search for the poems that break you open. Read those poems over and over again until you have them memorized in your mouth. Don't worry about mimicking them, just accept them as your teachers and hold them close. Become an expert on the poems you adore.

3) Cultivate silence. Silence is essential in order to hear your own voice. Especially nowadays when we often have the television on, the radio on, or music playing all day long, it is essential to find some silence to listen to your own voice. Your own voice is the only thing your poetry needs.

4) Embrace revision. Revision might be the hardest thing that writers have to do, aside from battling our own internal demons, because it means admitting that we are wrong. Sometimes we are so wrong that we need to start all over again, and it's embarrassing. Sometimes we only need to change a comma, but listen, every poem needs revision and every poet needs to learn humility.

5) Practice gratitude. Cherish those friends and colleagues who care enough to read and comment on your work. If you truly pursue writing, you will come to realize how enormously important these people are to your writing life and therefore to your making of a "real" life. Make sure you read their work with the same care and closeness they offer you. And buy them coffee and cakes when they return a manuscript with pencil marks on every page. It is a true act of kindness that should be greeted with great gratitude. And be thankful that you want to write at all, what a powerful art to devote a life to, how lucky we are to love such a wild untamable thing.

And of course, do go visit out Puisi-Poesy blog for discussion of poems that mean a lot to us. There are some very good new posts from Leon and Hazlan. You are welcome to contribute to it too!

Puisy-Poesy ... Posing

For a year now we've shared a poetry blog (our first anniversary was just a few days ago), but Saturday was the first time that the whole gang of us were together! A couple of the guys are shy and don't want to put their names (real or noms-de-blog) to the picture, but that's me on the floor at the front posing artistically. Too much wine, perhaps?

Meanwhile, our newest recruit, Nic, wants to know the truth about love.

Puisy-Poesy Philosophising

Our Puisy-Poesy blog features some recently posted poems asking some very big questions.

Why should we seek knowledge about the universe? Madcap Machinist reflects on the biggest of questions with Auden's After Reading a Child's Guide to Modern Physics and brings us up to date with the latest developments in cosmology!

I write about Molly Peacock's poem Why I am Not a Buddhist, which questions why we should even want to live without desire.

Sharanya chooses to celebrate International Women's Day with a powerful poem by Palestinian-American poet Suheir Hammad: of woman torn.

But the posts aren't all about heavy stuff: Leon picks Paul Farley's poem about the joys of revolving doors. But why is the poem actually titled Automatic Doors?

Pay us a visit and seek enlightenment.

We are hoping that the whole Pusiy-Poesy team will meet up for the first time ever at the KL Litfest! Imagine, we have become co-bloggers and friends over the past months, but are only slowly getting to know each other in "real" life.

But I think all of us would like to find ways to take the project further into other media. Performance? A book? Workshops? Anything's possible. Enthusiasm's high.

And we would really welcome your contributions to the blog. If there's a poem you love and want to discuss, please contact us.

A Bunch of Poetic Posies

On our poetry blog, that crazy Madcap Machinist has put together a Puisi-Poesy Valentine with a poem by Baudelaire, which you can listen to in the original sexy French.

Leon has a wonderful poem up, Singh Song! by Daljit Nagra, about a Sikh guy who runs a corner shop in a British town.

I stuck up one of Malika Booker's poems Arrival, about a man becoming a father for the first time.

And there's a lovely captured moment in Michael Ondaatje's Flight, posted by Dreamer Idiot.

Do go and enjoy. And if any of you shy guys out there woudl like to choose and write about a poem, get in touch.

Puisi Poesy Posies and Posers

If you haven't dropped by our poetry blog recently why not take a click's trip over there?

I've just added (a little late, I'm sorry) a favourite poem of mine: Louis MacNeice's Prayer before Birth in which the horrors of the modern world are seen through the eyes of an unborn child.

Machinist adds a couple of intriguing anagram poems by Kevin McFadden based on OuLiPo principles. (I'm trying to get my head around OuLiPo about which more another time.)

Sharanya has found a haunting poem called When I Cut My Hair by Cherokee poet Rayna Green, and gives a fascinating insight into what happened in Malika Booker's workshop.

On a lighter note, Dreamer Idiot takes the woman's side and gives us a very enjoyable poem about Bloody Men by Wendy Cope:

Bloody men are like bloody buses -
You wait for about a year
And as soon as one approaches your stop
Two or three others appear.

DI is, of course, a new man of astounding sensitivity.

And then there's a "prose poem" which I put up last time - The Love Motel by Indonesian poet Lakshmi Pamunjac - to open a debate about whether there really is such a creature (as a "prose poem" I mean: Lakshmi's very real!) Whether it's a poem or a story, never mind, the real issue at stake in this piece is - which is more important, sex or food?

Incidentally something has been bugging me ever since we started the blog. As you know, we take it in turns to choose a poem we love or that interests us and write about it. Well, over the past year I've noticed that the guys (Leon, DI and Machinist) tend to be much more interested in the technical aspects of the poem, the women (myself, Sharanya, Dina, Sham) in how we relate to it and whether it speaks to us emotionally. (Not that both aspects aren't vitally important when discussing a poem, but it's more a question of emphasis.)

I asked Malika when I interviewed her, about whether this reflects her own experiences and she says she thinks it is ... and also that men and women also seem to approach the writing of poetry somewhat differently! Are we two different species even where poetry is concerned?

Now then, would you like to contribute a post to the blog? You don't need to be "an expert", or be able to speak lingua poetica or have an SPM in advanced versification ... just have a poem you love and would like to share with the world.

Contact Dreamer Idiot or myself if you do.

(I nicked the very nice logo from someone else's blog and can't remember the address! Please let me know and I will credit you.)

Where Dragonflies Mate

What do mating dragonflies, ponderings on the word "screwing", a tirade against death, a bottle of gin and the fasting month have in common?

Well, not much ... except that they all come up in recent postings on our Puisy-Poesy poetry blog. Check them out!

Ants in My Pants

What on earth do red ants have to do with love?
Why is Sharanya turning Mexican?
What happened to Singapore's bold experiment in setting up a speaker's corner in Hong Lim Park?

These and the answers to other conundrums in life can be found in the most recent entries on our Puisy-Poesy blog.

Hot Weather Words

Our poetry blog
features the perfect haiku
for hot afternoons!

Puisy-Poesy Pussy

Cat, that is.

Poems on the Pusiy-Poesy blog include On the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes by Thomas Gray which I've just put up. Machinist examines Tennyson's The Eagle, and reminisces about Plymouth Hoe. Sharanya introduces all of us to an Indian poem Things Standing Shall Fall, But the Moving Ever Shall Stay by Basava which addresses, I feel, a fundamental religious truth no matter what our faith.

Enjoy and let us know what you think.

Superman Wants Out!

Over on the Puisi-Poesy blog Superman sounds depressed in the poem chosen by Dreamer Idiot, and Leon has uncovered a piece from a papal poet.

Love the blog or hate the blog? Think it could be improved? We'd value your opinions on the direction it's taking.

Poetically Yours

More poems to read and discuss over at the Puisi-Poesy blog. Dreamer Idiot has put up Ars Poetica by Archibald MacLeish, and Sham has just added Sleep Stealer by Rabindranath Tagore. Your comments are very much valued, even if you just say what you like, dislike about the poems ...

I find that when I come across a new poem, I need time to reread it, digest it, live with it a bit before I feel ready to talk about it.

Corpses

Meanwhile, over on the Puisi-Poesy blog, Leon has posted something quite ghoulish ...

I am going to carry David Harsent's poem Snapshot (1) round with me today to ponder some more before I post a comment ...

Here Puisi-Puisy Poesy ...

I just posted up another favourite poem for discussion at our Puisy-Poesy website. It's e.e.cummings nobody loses all the time. I have a soft spot for failures and a love of a strong narrative voice whether in short stories or in poetry.

We've now got enough enthusiastic members for two postings a week. Fetish Machinist posted up a Thomas Hardy poem, Channel Firing, the other day for comment.

Dreamer Idiot, thanks so much for coordinating the whole thing, I'm really enjoying myself.

Picture: e.e. cummings Self-Portrait with Notebook

Anyone for Eliot?

Anyone for a spot of Eliot before breakfast?

Dreamer Idiot has put up Preludes, one of my favourite poems, for discussion on the Puisy-Poesy blog.

Meanwhile, I have forbidden myself to blog before I get my article finished, even though I have several very nice stories rubbing round my legs and nibbling my toes ... ouch!

Picture: Eliot in a portrait by Wyndham-Lewis. Tate Gallery, London.

Scarecrow

There's something eerie about scarecrows ... Leon comments on Muriel Spark's poem Standing in the Field on the Puisi-poesy blog.

Related Posts:

Bright Spark (27/4/06)
Author's Ghosts (16/11/05)

Picture: Scarecrows by Hugo Bastidas

Simply Marvell-ous

Today it's my turn to post up a poem for discussion at Puisi-poesy and I've chosen my favourite poem of all time: To His Coy Mistress by Alexander Marvell. Go take a look.

Red Earth and Pouring Rain

Sharanya has joined the list of contributors for our poetry blog and this week introduces us to a poem translated from the Tamil. Step across!

Lyrical Leon

It's Leon's turn to post up a poem at Puisy-Poesy, and he's chosen The Vision of the Virgin by Ian Duhig from his collection The Lamas Hireling.

Puisy - Poesy: Peaches for Poets

Dreamer Idiot has finally got his (our!) new venture going. It's a new poetry blog called Puisi- poesy where he or we (the we at the moment being Leon and myself, but it could include you, dear reader if you so wish) take it in turns to post up a poem that we would like to talk about. And then of course it's open season for the rest of the poetry loving world to add their thoughts and talk about where the poem leads them. As DI puts it:

...this would be a place to sembang-sembang – the Malay word and local phrase for meeting up for chit chat.

A virtual mamak stall chat over virtual teh tarik. Informal. Unstuffy. Genuine reader-response rather than heavy-weight academic discussion. A sharing rather than a lecture. And embracing poetry in Malay as well as in English.

Will it work? Dreamer Idiot has given the project a four month let's-see period.

Anyway, the blog gets off to a great start with DI's discussion of Peter David's delightful poem Peaches. (Read it out loud but don't spill juice on the keyboard, okay?)