Yes, I’m enjoying the poetry section of A215 more than I enjoyed the fiction – no surprise there then

The only drawback is that it leads to a proliferation of notebooks, scraps of paper and computer documents which can be very hard to track down – you get hit by a beautiful line, write it down and then …. can’t find it again! I seem to work best with several poems on the go, usually handwritten in a large A4 looseleaf binder so I can switch between them.

My favourite poets are probably Gerard Manley Hopkins and Dylan Thomas. Many years ago, when I was just eleven (yes, THAT many years ago …!) I was in a First Year class called 1W because each class bore the initial of its supervisory teacher. Well, ours was a Welshman by the name of Norman Waldron. He was over 6ft tall with dark wavy hair, a glorious Welsh accent, a passion for Rugby, music (especially choral) and custard creams. He also had the sort of film-star good looks that had every mother eager to attend Parents Evening. On the last day of the summer term (remember how hectic and chaotic they were?) he brought in an LP (you know, black, vinyl, round, fragile?) and played us ‘Under Milk Wood’ by Dylan Thomas read by the late great Richard Burton. I think the entire class went quiet to listen. Fabulous!

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!

OK, so like many other A215 students both past and present, the poetry module of the course is proving to be very heavy going. I’m sure Professor Herbert is a very learned, experienced and talented poet but he doesn’t seem to ’snag’ a student’s attention with his chapter on poetry.

In fact, I found Prof Herbert’s initial insistence on freewriting left me feeling powerless, adrift, overwhelmed and lost – faced with a page of A4 prose, I found it incredibly difficult to dissect out the bits that might be fledgling poetry. So I ploughed onward to the end of the chapter, making a few notes and highlighting a few relevant sentences before setting the Big Red Book aside.

Then I fetched out my copy of  “The Ode less travelled – unlocking the poet within” by Stephen Fry which I bought at Waterstones in Birmingham on one of our recent trips. What a difference!

I can highly recommend the Stephen Fry book – especially since he lays out very tongue-in-cheek rules and insists that poetry is FAR better when read out loud. The whole book is written exactly as if he were talking directly to you – that could be intensely irritating for some people but I could just hear his voice. He deals with a section then sets an exercise, first giving you his take on the exercise before letting you loose. Some of his poetry just cracked me up and made me laugh out loud. Even better, he starts with all the intricacies of metre and rhythm using nice simple words like ‘Ti-tum Ti-tum Ti-tum Ti-tum Ti-tum’ to help you tap out iambic pentameter and other metrical rhythms before he moves on to rhyming, and along the way he takes in Greek poetry, Anglo Saxon poetry and, a poet I studied for A Level English Literature – the incomparable Gerard Manley Hopkins.

So my inspiration for poetry is now restored and I leave you with a rather messy poem that I wrote as a direct result of the above. In fact, I caused some puzzlement in the A215 cafe because I assumed that most people would be able to identify the second red book as Stephen Fry’s “The Ode less Travelled” (also a paperback book in a red cover) since it came highly recommended by previous A215 students as being an easier introduction to poetry than Prof Herbert. (The ’scarlet ring’ foxed someone too – it’s a lifebelt)

A Poem about Two Red Books

I sag beneath the Big Red Book, it weighs
me down, extinguishing my timid spark.
My awen lost. Yet still I search the maze
and stumble onward searching for the light.

A scarlet ring just misses me!
I grab it quick. What can this be?

“Come, travel now”, the dulcet tones
invite and tempt, “The Ode awaits
to be unlocked. We’ll open gates
and set essential awen free of chains”

I laugh out loud. I tap the sheets
and count out joyously the beats.
He pulls me onward, breathless leaps
to roars of mirth and rhythmic treats.

Frying tonight?
You bet!

[1] awen, a Welsh word poetically translated as ’sacred inspiration’, the literal meaning is ‘flowing spirit’, the essence of life, creative energy, part of Druidic beliefs.

I’m away first thing tomorrow morning so I’m off to finish my packing and make sure I have everything I need for my Day School tomorrow – see you when I get back *waves*

So here is the study brief for the first week:

29 September

• Course text: Part 1: The creative process

• Chapter 1 Stimulating creativity and imagination what really works?

This is where we get to practise Morning Pages and Freewriting developed by Peter Elbow (this is a link to an 80.5 kb Adobe Acrobat .pdf file) and Clustering so there’s plenty of writing to be getting on with despite it having the appearance of a fairly free-form week.

I did do my morning pages today! I put my notebook and pen on the bedside table and, once I’d surfaced sufficiently to be able to muster a coherent thought or two, reached for them and started writing. Unfortunately I’m also suffering from an eye infection at the moment and it’s difficult to see what you’re writing when your eye is a mess So I did the best I could and was hardly able to read the writing when I finished. But I did do a full A5 page non-stop so I feel quite pleased with that.

Of course, I shouldn’t really be blogging at midnight so I’d better head for bed. See you all tomorrow *waves*

P.S. winks at my regular Liverpudlian visitor – I’m a Liverpudlian too, you know

Well, I waited anxiously all day yesterday for the Island Carriers van to pull into our drive bearing the precious A215 course materials parcel but I waited in vain

This morning, just as I was putting out the ‘Open’ signs for the Gallery, the long-awaited behemoth lumbered into the drive and the sandy-haired young man unfolded long limbs from the driving seat, opened the back doors and reached into the darkness within ….

Moments later, I had the precious parcel in my hands, managed a fleeting ‘thanks’ over my shoulder and scurried up the steps into the house, clutching it tightly to my chest. “It’s here!” I squeaked excitedly to no-one and plonked it on the bench in the office with a resounding thud … only to be called away immediately by customers coming into the Gallery :\

It was almost an hour later that I managed to return to the office and finally snip the thick flat white bindings. Inside was The Big Red Book resplendent in its fiery covers, a Study Guide to match, a plastic-wrapped packet of CDs, the OU’s Applications Disk version 9 and various other leaflets and sheets of information. I could have danced round the Office

Later on, when The Artist returned, I hurried off downstairs to peruse the course materials. It dawned on me that, as well as a lot of writing in the course, there is also going to be a lot of reading as well.

Here I have to confess, somewhat shame-faced, that I very rarely read fiction in book form. In fact, I don’t read much fiction at all. If I do read a book it’s usually non-fiction, principally gardening books, cookery books, computer books etc. I did borrow a couple of books from my Mother-in-Law’s bookcase when we were last in Birmingham – one is “The God of Small Things” by Arundhati Roy and the other is “Bel Canto” by Anne Patchett. But I admit they’ve been sitting on my desk for two weeks and I haven’t done more than read the blurb on the back covers …

I have, however, broken through the writer’s block that meant I’ve been carrying a notebook and pen around with me, expectantly, for the last five days. I finally made some brief notes about the shadows of house martins flickering across the sunny granite wall of the barn opposite our bedroom window

Oh, and I had a nice birthday yesterday even though I spent the morning cleaning one of our apartments ready for new guests. I had a lazy afternoon on the computer and then we went out for a fabulous meal courtesy of the Mad Swiss chef at our favourite restaurant … complete with a single lighted pink candle stuck slightly awkwardly into the ‘creme’ at the very edge of the golden crackly ‘brulee’ that I chose for my dessert Cheers!

After yesterday’s hard work in the garden, sleep didn’t come easily or comfortably to me last night. I tossed and turned, groaning each time I shifted in position, muscles across the small of my back going into painful spasms that froze me immobile for a few seconds each time. I should know better but I enjoy gardening and there are always so many jobs to be done.

So this morning I could barely roll out of bed and straighten up. I briefly considered painkillers butI don’t like taking them for backache because I feel a need to be aware of the pain. Pain is there for a reason – it says ‘Don’t go any further!’ and I suspect I might be less careful if painkillers were suppressing my body’s natural warning system. So I took one of the tablets that the doctor prescribed for my lumbago a while back, since that was the characteristic of the pain, and fortunately it helped ease the backache.

I also made sure I kept moving because I know, as sure as eggs is eggs, if I adopt a policy of making the least movement possible, that my body will seize up and be even more painful. The best solution is to carry on as normally as feasible and the aches will gradually diminish. So I continued with my work at a reduced level, including hoovering and other housework.

The backache did ease very gradually over the course of the morning and I was feeling reasonably comfortable by lunchtime. Of course, sitting down for lunch made my back seize up again but not as badly as this morning. I made sure I got up from my chair in the office at frequent intervals this afternoon, especially to make copious mugs of tea

This evening, sitting at my office chair typing this, I am conscious of my back stiffening again but I’m headed off to bed early and will take another of the lumbago tablets before I go to sleep. I’m hoping to get a better night tonight …

On a more cheerful note, students on the A215 open conference on First Class are reporting that the first of their course materials turned up this morning Most of them seemed to be in London and other cities so I’m not holding out much hope of receiving mine any time soon The Post Office was always pretty good but if it’s DHL then I expect my parcel will still be several days away from delivery, especially since I signed up for the course quite late. Now where did I put that notebook?

From reading about A215, I gather that notebooks are ‘de rigeur’ for the course and students are strongly encouraged to use them. I don’t know what the collective term for notebooks is but I might suggest a ‘nervousness’ of notebooks, drawn from the feeling often experienced when faced with a blank white page … or multiples thereof.

I’m now the proud owner of a ‘nervousness’ of notebooks which lurk in the depths of the document bag that appeared as a free gift when we purchased a large number of envelopes from an online supplier recently. I picked up a couple of new ones this morning from a local shop – they are dressed in matching vertical wavy pastel stripes and one is A5 while the other is smaller (A6? A7?). The smaller one should be suitable for keeping close by and jotting down those sudden thoughts or ideas that arrive unannounced in the middle of the washing up. I’m thinking the other one might be useful for ‘Morning Pages’.

When I read about ‘Morning Pages’ I was … well … taken aback, might be a good description. Write three pages longhand of random thoughts first thing in the morning???? Don’t get me wrong, I’m quick on the draw with a keyboard but I also do quite a lot of longhand writing as well. Additionally, my handwriting has been described as ‘delightful’ and ‘beautiful’ so I shouldn’t have much difficulty reading what I’ve written. But the idea of hanging loose and just jotting down the random thoughts that bounce around my brain first thing in the morning is a daunting challenge.

You see, I’m your typical Virgo – definitely a perfectionist, conscientious and well-organised. I don’t do ‘hanging loose’ very easily and I can worry at a piece of written work ad infinitum until I get as close to perfect as possible. Drafting and rewriting are second nature and I can see myself doing a lot of that over the next nine months. It’s actually the ‘creative’ part of A215 that will be hard for me, especially at first I think, because so much of my writing tends to be formal and factual.

So I’ll leave you with a limerick that bounced fairly effortlessly into my mind on October 30th 2002 (according to the notepad file where I saved it)

The problem with being a perfectionist
Is summed up by one word – rejectionist.
If things are not right
I get all uptight
And swiftly become a trajectionist!