Summer is officially here, though we still are really only in spring in terms of where the weather and plant growth is. My tulips are just blooming, the long days mean the grass is growing at a rate of knots and the birch pollen is trying to kill me. I've started work at the allotment but can only do an hour or so before it becomes too much. Two weeks left of school, so things are starting to ease overall.
Since the Global Poetry Writing Month finished I've been keeping up my goal of writing every day. I'm trying to put together a small collection and this has been a good way to fill gaps, though I have no idea what I want to say when I sit down everyday or what is missing within the collection.
This is my current process. I open my journal, write the first word that jumps out at me from whatever I'm reading or looking at. Today the word is pronounced. I don't know why it caught my eye from the screen, but I just go from there. I may not even use the word as I write, but it feels like an anchor to start with. Then I glance around wherever I am or at what I'm reading, scroll Insta or read a few Substack notes and just scribble down any image, phrase or word that appeals. I have no theme or direction, I am just a collector of scraps and details at this point.
When I have a page or two of notes, I go back and reread them. Sometimes the juxtaposition of phrases together suggests something or they take me in a particular direction. I rewrite phrases together or if nothing sings I go back and write more notes. Some days I get nothing but notes, other times I'm able to string them together into a rough draft or a few lines that I pull into another poem I'm working on. I'm enjoying the unconscious flow of my writing. I do have themes for my collection, my love and aging poems, but sometimes my brain takes me elsewhere. I've circled back for a few poems to my eternal themes of finding home and being lost as a choice, maybe they'll have a place in the collection too.
This has been pretty much my process and how I've been able to write about 30 poems in 48 days. They may not all be good, but as I mentioned in another post, I'm currently in love with them because they're fresh and speaking from where I am right now. And even if that changes, I still feel this is an accomplishment after a very fallow winter of writing.
I started this post this morning and it's now after dinner. It has taken me several returns to my notebook and then the computer to have the bones of a poem sketched for today. I don't want to share the whole piece, but I'll show the first stanza. I did use my word in the title. The bold are the notes I wrote in my journal. Not all of them were next to each other, so they were stitched together in this stanza.
I have been pronounced wanting
people ask me to open myself
they peer through
just window shopping
to discover I am a fraud of dusty shelves
a returned item that didn’t suit
It's a funny little poem that goes from this to a kelpie. This writing process is producing quirky points of view I wouldn't normally take, but I like them as they fit my mood at the moment. I'm owning my awkwardness and that's part of what this poem is about, others find me wanting, but I'm becoming something different from what they see.
I took this photo at the weekend and prompted my note today I am a fraud at sunset because it wasn’t really this vivid, but my phone made it so false. My head is weird.
No comments:
Post a Comment