I’ve come to the conclusion over the last couple of weeks that my approach to writing poetry is best described as ‘free-noting’ rather than ‘freewriting’. I tend to start with a big A4 sheet of lined paper, write a rough one line precis of what I am aiming for at the top, then add lots of jottings below. I might note down what form the poem could take – sonnet? sestina? vilanelle? I can make notes about the important happenings in the poem, images, descriptions, lines that occur to me, words from my Thesaurus, trial rhythms … all sorts of stuff. I end up with a whole page of notes and scribbles that contain the beginning essence of the poem.
Then I let it ’simmer’ quietly for a day or so, returning occasionally if a thought occurs to me that I need to add to my freenotes, adding words or ideas.
I have several pieces in this sort of freenote format, none of which have taken on any real form as such, but are really collections of thoughts and jottings just waiting to be moulded and polished.
On the other hand, I’ve been reading lots of poetry – as widely advised both by the course team and fellow past/present students – and become quite disheartened at the brilliance of what I read and the paltryness of what I write.
No-one ever said writing poetry was easy and a LOT of people have said that writing poetry is damned hard work!
