Poetry Writing and Me
As someone who likes the idea of being a poet (and may even possess some small ability at it) but still finds the whole thing a little alien and strange
’s fantastic piece here spoke to me like few do.However he lost me at the blues harmonica part and my friendly nodding along slowly turned into a quiet jealousy. I mean, imagine being able to play the blues harmonica. How cool would that be? You’d have a permanent pocket sized party piece to impress people with and you’d be able to bring solace to the whole cell block if you were ever wrongfully imprisoned in some sort of backwoods work camp situation.
Or maybe that’s just a daydream born from my having (mis)spent my youth on matinee reruns and adventure stories. Or maybe it’s just the poet in me talking…
Enjoy.
TJB.
Poetry writing is not my thing. At least, I don't think it is. The reason for my uncertainty is that although I attended a one-day poetry class some years ago, the feedback provided by the tutor was not very detailed, to say the least. It mainly consisted of either several appreciative "Ooooh’s" accompanied by slow nodding, or utter silence. I think at one point I was rewarded with one "ooh" with no nodding for my efforts, but I have no idea why. I have no idea what (if anything) was good about that particular poem, or why, if it was good enough to merit an “ooh”, it was not good enough to merit more than one nod. Perhaps the tutor felt sorry for me, having responded with complete silence to all my efforts up to that point, but could not quite bring herself to unleash unbridled enthusiasm.
Mind you, I wasn’t the only one left bemused. Somebody asked this tutor for a proper feedback comment, rather than an “ooh”. She responded by saying, “Five out of ten”. He replied, not unreasonably I thought, “What does that actually mean?” She had no answer. I rapidly learnt not to read out anything at all in the class, and to practise in silence.
So, I may or may not be a poet in the making. The course wasn't a complete waste of time: I learnt about some forms of poetry I'd never heard of, and got to hear some fine poetry from some of the other people on the course. But as for serious poetry writing, I think it's fair to say that the jury is still out. A better tutor would have enabled me to have more clarity.
More important is the question of why I decided to sign up for a poetry class in the first place. The reason was that I have always enjoyed reading poetry, and thought perhaps I should try to learn how to write it properly. After all, many moons ago I wrote a lot of poetry, and not without some success.
For example, whilst doing English Literature 'A' Level I was so taken with Elizabethan verse romances that I decided to write my own. Calling it Tamara and Terry (Tamara being a friend of mine in the class), I typed it up and showed it to my English teacher and Tamara.
The English tutor liked it so much he said he was going to use it with the following year's cohort. Tamara read it while waiting in a a queue in the bank, and received some funny looks when she kept chortling and shrieking with laughter.
But on the whole I have been much more prone to prose writing, and almost all of the courses I've attended over the last few years have been concerned with that. Why? Because as a professional writer (amongst other things) I believe it important to do as much as I can to improve my skills. Even the flash fiction course I attended a couple of years ago was purely for the sake of learning how to write a story in 100 words or less in order to apply the techniques to non-fiction writing. Poetry writing, alas, has never been high on my bucket list.
A few years ago I attended an evening of poetry and prose called Late Lines, run by the City Lit adult education institute in London, and heard some poetry I thought was marvellous. In particular, I really liked a poem by Vetta. I told her she ought to publish it, though it's a question of where.
And then right at the end, Alexandra read/performed three of her poems. I found them very touching, and very thought-provoking. So on the basis of hearing Vetta and Alexandra, I decided there and then to sign up for a poetry course. I wanted to learn more about how to write poetry. That’s where the course I wrote about at the start of this article comes in.
There was another unexpected outcome of that evening. One of the things I'm reasonably good at is playing the blues harmonica. I know that to be the case both from the fact that I can usually contribute to a piece of music I've never heard before, and also that on the odd occasion I attend an open mic night, many musicians ask me to accompany them on stage once they've heard me play.
Unfortunately, work commitments made it hard for me to find the time to practise. Because of that, I decided not to buy a harmonica I loved the sound of, but which I knew I would need to teach myself to play: an E minor harmonic. It is used to play ethnic music like gypsy or Yiddish tunes, for improvising in jazz, and even some classical music.
Well, I chatted with Alexandra afterwards and told her I loved her poetry, and asked her if she had any books of her work. She said she didn't, because really her work needed to be read out. I suggested that she could always self-publish an audio book, but even as I said it I realised it wouldn't be the same. Then I thought that as long as Alexandra is not performing her poetry, the world is missing out.
That's when it occurred to me that the same might be said about me in relation to playing blues harmonica. As long as I'm not getting involved in the music scene, perhaps people are missing out, the people who would enjoy playing with or listening to me. It's difficult for me to write that because I'm not an egotist, and I don't mean it as a brag. I'm simply saying that as some people have enjoyed my playing, my not playing is leaving a gap unfilled.
The next day I bought the harmonica.
I've been making time (though not enough) to practise, both the stuff I can (could) already play plus the new harmonica. One of these days I shall go to a blues open mic session again, and see what happens. And who knows? I might even write some decent poetry for a change.
I have to say that attending poetry recitals is not something I'm inclined to do very often, but I'm very glad I went. It's amazing what can happen just from having listened to a couple of very talented people being brave enough to share their work with a bunch of strangers.
Terry writes about anything and everything over on Eclecticism.
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