Sometimes the best way to discover new writers is through an anthology. For instance, I buy The Best American Poetry each year so that I can get a good sampling of poetry from the (mostly) big journals. I also love reading more thematic anthologies, including the world poetry anthology Not a Muse: The Inner Lives of Women, edited by Kate Rogers and Viki Holmes (Haven Books).

The anthology collects the voices of more than 100 female poets from 24 countries, including a few poems from Rogers and Holmes. Here are a few:

Beaching Your Ship of Rowing on a Hostile Shore
by Viki Holmes

you don't write great lines, you discover; like the wish
the sculptor strips from stone, a chisel opening the art. i
carve with an unsteady hand, while something grows beneath. you
can mean so many things, that
proximity is what you crave; you wish your Other here
with you, or maybe that you want to share what you alone can't see. were

your perceptions needing to be heard? letters from where you were
imply past tense, you've gone already, made a wish
in ink, in stone: the story leaps from your poised hand, and here
we stand, waiting to see what we uncover. i
wonder sometimes at the things that
we create, and where they come from; so do you.

a sculptor doesn't know what's locked inside the stone, you
start from outside, work your way back in until the pictures that were
always inside leap up to your fingers' touch. that
feeling of discovery is so compelling: make a wish
and lay your fingers on the quiet rock--i
think that you'll begin to feel that something new is here

watching and waiting. years ago and far away from here
those tricksters took their chisels to the lost Sumerian faces and you
cannot tell now what those rulers were. is such destruction something i
can render, or make good? such questions were
the heart of the beginning. now i wish
i'd known you, Enheduanna, your flight like the swallow's, that

same urge to be consumed, blanketed in wool and ritural. that
scarf like a diadem, keeping you here
among the woven garments covering their queen: if i were there i'd wish
to hold your ritual basket, to turn you
my honey mouth in praise, so soft and sweet--but all we were
then was confusion. Ur and Uruk joined in my hands at your wish and suddenly, i

beached your ship of rowing on a hostile shore, i
lived in stone: circular and present at your side, that
holy profile as you made your hymn, the stars were
sighing for you, prow of the goddess: here,
on this shore, you set your claim, your sacrifice, you
trade your name for stone and dust, Enheduanna, so i place my wish:

i wish
that you
were here.

Scheherazade
by Kate Rogers

I am Scheherazade: I dance this poem.
I am snake charmer. Lure the dangerous
reptile from his basket in the market place.
He bobs and sways in time to my drum
and drools milky venom as I swivel my hips,
beckon with my cobra arms. The scent
of honey and cinnamon lingers in my wake.
Follow its trail to my bed. I will intertwine
tales told in gossamer whispers
and velvet moans as shadows gyrate
in flickering candle light. I need your gaze:
it makes me real. Wait on the edge
with me as our legs tremble. I will shake
my gauze draped hips and my girdle of coins,
tinkling like chimes licked by a breeze.
You will beg for release but there is no climax
to this tale. Only the present moment
and a hunger for tomorrow.

*****

What have you been up to recently?

Kate Rogers: I have been writing a bit this summer and working on a new poetry collection. Viki and I have been recording podcasts for Not A Muse. At Easter I took Not A Muse to the AWP (American Writers and Writing Programs Conference) and did a reading there from NAM with some of our American contributors. That was well attended and helped pave the way for the American debut of the anthology in June. In the autumn of 2009, Viki and I were asked to the Ubud Writers’ Festival in Bali, Indonesia, to launch Not A Muse there and participate in a panel on women's international literary voices.

Viki Holmes: This summer I have been working with Kate on podcasts for Not A Muse! Otherwise I've performed for the Hong Kong Literary Festival: a wonderful event that reminded me of my first ever Happy Demon reading, which was also set in a library. The last couple of weeks I've been leading creative writing workshops for primary school students, which has been a refreshing contrast--it can be very inspiring to see how young minds react to poetry. I host a monthly jazz poetry event, which is another new take on performance--our Hong Kong launch for Not A Muse was a multi-media event involving art, photography, poetry and jazz, and working with other artists can help you see your own work in new ways. So lots of inspiration!

Kate, you're originally from Toronto but now live in Hong Kong. How has that affected your writing and publishing life?

Rogers: In fact, it has been good for my writing and publishing life.  I began having work published in Canadian literary journals in the 1990s and that has continued since. But by travelling and by meeting poets in other countries, I have learned a lot about developing my craft. And in the process I have also gotten publishing opportunities outside Canada: in the U.S., Britain, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Indonesia.

Viki, your press release says that you began your writing career in Cardiff as part of the Happy Demon poetry collective. What is the Happy Demon poetry collective?

Holmes: The Happy Demon Poetry Collective was a group of five poets who performed and organised poetry events every three weeks in Cardiff, Wales, from 1999-2001. Four Cardiff poets, one from Newport. Three men, two women. We hosted poetry events with guest readers and the Happy Demons, with an emphasis on performance and making poetry exciting. Our first reading was held in Cardiff Library, which is why I was so happy to be reading at a library again for the Hong Kong Literary Festival.

You've twice been a finalist for the John Tripp Award for Spoken Poetry. What do you feel makes for a good poetry reading?

Holmes: Have someone in mind when you're performing, and read your poem to them. Address them with your every word: believe in the importance of what you are saying to them, and allow your words--and ideas--space to breathe. Believe that your work is worth hearing, and you will convey that to your audience.

How did you get involved in the Not A Muse project?

Rogers: Viki and I have been friends and edited each others work for about four years. We launched our new poetry collections together: Viki's Miss Moon's Class and my Painting the Borrowed House. Our shared launch was a huge success—attracting more than one hundred people. At that moment we said to each other, "What next?" After workshopping poetry together for several years, collaboration seemed like a natural next step. The answer we came up with was an anthology of women's poetry—I think because as women poets we were aware of writing about topics particular to the feminine experience: the life of the body, desire, joy, loss and longing as only women experience them. And at the same time we thought of the idea of women finding inspiration from their own lives.

The woman who became our publisher at Haven Books was in the audience and we approached her with the idea of the anthology on the spot. She immediately said "Yes!"

Holmes: Not A Muse has for me been so much about dialogues between women: shared experiences and shared intimacies. So it's natural enough that our project began as a conversation. I remember a train journey with Kate about a week after we'd celebrated the joint launch of our solo poetry collections, and discussing what we should do next. We'd both been thinking--and writing--about the nature of the Muse in our poetry at that time. In our reflections about the nature of woman as mysterious, enigmatic, silent Other, we speculated about what the Muse would say were she given a voice. The creative process as women experience it: being the writers of poetry rather than the subject of it. As with so much of the process of Not A Muse, the central idea for the book grew organically from this initial unfolding of ideas between friends.

What process did you use to collect and assemble the anthology?

Rogers: We wrote a call for submissions which was designed to elicit the kind of poetry we were hoping to receive: risk taking with both theme and form. We quoted Virginia Woolf to help frame the type of work we were looking for. Here is an excerpt from the call for submissions:

Across the broad continent of a woman's life falls the shadow of a sword. On one side all is correct, definite, orderly; the paths are strait, the trees regular, the sun shaded; escorted by gentlemen, protected by policemen, wedded and buried by clergy-men, she has only to walk demurely from cradle to grave and no one will touch a hair of her head. But on the other side all is confusion. Nothing follows a regular course. The paths wind between bogs and precipices. The trees roar and rock and fall in ruin.

—Virginia Woolf, Collected Essays Volume III

Virginia Woolf wrote that in 1925; in 2008 are we living in a post-feminist age? How do we define ourselves as women? Are we living our lives honestly, completely true to ourselves? If we choose an unconventional life, what are the costs?

Not a Muse is about our choices.

How we define ourselves as women and poets. How we define freedom.
Male writers and poets throughout the centuries have turned to a feminine muse as a creative catalyst. But there is much more to us than providing a source of inspiration. Now, the Muse is finding her own voice.

Not A Muse is an exciting new anthology of writing by women from around the world, who look within for their inspiration, whether they embrace solitude, or struggle with it, whether they fight to balance children and marriage with writing, or choose another way.

As for how we assembled the anthology, we saw themes and categories emerge organically from the work submitted to us. We did not have preconceived ideas of how we should organize the anthology. Certain themes appeared over and over and they inspired the creation of sections, such as "Woman as Archetype." We also realized that much of the work sent to us had more than one theme: Woman as Lover and Woman Ageing co-exist in Lorna Crozier's "My Last Erotic Poem," for example. So when we were deciding how to organize the poetry, we often put it in the less obvious theme and corresponding section.  

Holmes: We sent out a call for submissions both in Hong Kong and internationally--the internet and even Facebook was a wonderful tool in getting in contact with poets that we liked and admired. Some poets we wrote to personally and asked them if they'd like to submit, but of course we wanted to hear the voices of poets unknown to us also. The call for submissions was published in a variety of online journals and poetry websites around the world, and it seemed to inspire contributors, who in turn passed on the call for submissions to poets that they liked and admired.

It was immensely gratifying to see how our writers responded to the ideas and questions raised by our call for submissions. And to see the breadth and depth of submissions--I think I can say that Kate and I were both amazed by the number of poets who were eager to contribute.

Of course, once we realised that this was going to be a big book, we had to think of some way of teasing an order from the multiplicity of voices!  Rather than impose an order, an identity on the wonderful poems we had in front of us, we looked to the poems themselves for guidance. The themes emerged from the selection process, and then it was a case of deciding where best to place each voice. Many of these editorial meetings took place on Cheung Sha beach, a beautiful and inspiring place where Kate and I often have our writer's meetings!  I remember a summer filled with sheaves of paper, whether at the beach, in the office, or at our homes. Because the themes were chosen in this way--you might say that the themes chose us rather than the other way around--there is a certain degree of fluidity. Just as women themselves do not easily fit into a single identity, so with the poems. But of course, a reader has to start somewhere. We hoped that our themes would work as a springboard for our readers' reflections, rather than imposing limitations or a rigid view.

What separates the Not A Muse anthology from other poetry anthologies? And why is that relevant?

Rogers: Not A Muse is about women creating a community of experience. As women writers, the things we choose to write about are unique and at times, disdained by the male writing community: for example the inescapable impact of spending a lifetime in a female body. It reminds us all the time that we are life givers, nurturers, and the original creators. It is our landscape, which shapes who we are, just as cultures develop in response to the topography they appear in.

Holmes: Of course, there are other anthologies of women's poetry, but Not A Muse I think presents a unique angle on its emphasis on women's creativity and our inner lives. There are writers whose work has not previously been seen in English. I think the mixture of established writers such as Erica Jong, Margaret Atwood and Sharon Olds with previously unheard voices presents a new and fresh view.

In general, what do you consider the strengths of poetry anthologies?

Rogers: I think poetry anthologies can allow disparate voices to unite around a theme and thus, create a new reality and collective voice.

Holmes: As an editor, I'm fascinated by the structures and themes that emerge when anthologising--whether it be my own work or those of others. I love the meta-narratives that can be teased out, the links between poems, that make an anthology even greater than the sum of its parts. Reading a good anthology is like uncovering a hidden story--wonderful!

You are a poet yourself, and your work appeared in the anthology. How did you decide which of your own poems to include?

Rogers: Viki helped choose my poems and I helped choose hers: we wanted them to relate to the theme of being  "Not a muse." I particularly love Viki's "Muse" because it is all about the down side of being the iconic, inspirational woman. We each made suggestions from among our own poems and helped each other select the best ones.
 
The poems I suggested from among my own were narrative poems (as most of my poetry is).  "Why I Won't Worship at your Feet" and "Scheherazade" both tell stories. The former uses the story of Penelope—wife of Odysseus—to tell both a personal and universal story. Other classical Greek references imply that the history of woman on the margins is a long one: woman always waiting, "unpicking" her cleverness like father-in-law Laertes' shroud—so it is never seen by day. And of course the muses we refer to in Western literature originated with the ancient Greeks. As for Scheherazade, she is the original female story teller, and her tale is about a woman who saved her own life by telling stories.  Written self-expression is a matter of survival for many writers, not just a source of solace.

Holmes: Both Kate and I had been writing and reflecting on the nature of the female Muse in our poetry, which is partly what inspired us to produce the anthology, so of course we included those poems. For the others, we applied the same rules for ourselves as we had for our contributors: risk-taking and original work. We discussed potential choices with one another and eventually I chose a poem about the Akkadian moon priestess Enheduanna, one of the first epic poets, and a very strong woman. It's also a sestina, I'm fascinated by form and wanted to make sure I had a form poem included. My other poem is very much rooted in the modern! Kate's selections had a similar balance of ancient and modern.

Did you encounter any surprises while working on this anthology?

Rogers: When male poets wanted to submit I was surprised. I didn't want to exclude them, and as Viki has observed, we didn't set out to do that. But since one of our primary goals was to create a female poets' community of experience it didn't make sense to include male poets in the end. Viki may have more to add on this.

Holmes: I think perhaps the biggest surprise was the size of the book, and the sheer number of submissions! It was an amazing moment too when Erica Jong agreed to contribute. I think at that moment Kate and I realised the scope of what we were doing--we felt absolutely empowered and validated in what we were doing!

What do you feel is the greatest challenge of assembling a poetry anthology?

Rogers: From my point of view the biggest challenge was the task of making Not A Muse representative enough. We wanted it to have a huge scope and to include far more women poets who do not write in English. But translation takes time and costs money and we had a deadline and budget constraints to keep in mind. If we were to do this again or go into a second edition, I would hope that we could include far more Chinese women poets in English translation. I met some interesting Indian poets at the Man Hong Kong Literary Festival this year and it would be great to consider their work too, so we could add some of them to augment the work of Indian women poets we have already featured, like Rati Saxena.

Holmes: I think that choosing the right people to work with is crucial! Kate and I are lucky in that we have a very intuitive and balanced partnership, so we were able to work together under pressure. We also have an amazing publisher, Dania, who has been supportive, encouraging and pro-active.

Kate, your collection Painting the Borrowed House was published in 2008; what do you think makes a good collection?

Rogers: I think themes, moods, images and locations should flow from one another, but in unexpected ways. That is what we tried to do with the anthology: reframe the standard interpretations of women and our roles to foster fresh and unusual views of women. Collections should do the same.

Who are you currently reading?

Rogers: Two poets I admire: Turkish woman poet Bejan Matur, whom we met at the Ubud Literary Festival in Bali, Indonesia, and American poet Billy Collins. I love Bejan's work—which is so passionate and fits Margaret Atwood's definition of poetry as "condensed emotion." I love Billy Collins' poetry because his eye is so fresh and his work so poignant and quirky. 

Holmes: It's the summer holidays, so I've a great stack of fiction to look forward to! I'm a sucker for Victorian sensation fiction, and Gordon Dahlquist's The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters is a wonderful contemporary working of the genre, full of glitter and sensuality.  Kate has lent me The Quickening Maze, by Adam Foulds, a fictive biography of the nature poet John Clare, and for poetry I return to Eileen R. Tabios' I Take Thee English, for My Beloved. Eileen is one of our Not A Muse poets, and has long been an inspiration for my own work.

If you could offer only one piece of advice to poets, what would it be?

Rogers: Don't self-censor: take risks with the things you choose to write about. When you write about things which might make others (or you!) uncomfortable, you are giving everyone a gift. Your reader may find you have mirrored a previously unexpressed experience and you may surprise yourself.

Holmes: Read your work out loud! Listen to how it sounds, pay attention to your rhythms and cadences. If you can, read your work in front of an audience. Not only will it develop your confidence, but you will quickly be able to tell what works and what does not.

*****

Learn more about Not A Muse and Haven Books at www.havenbooksonline.com.

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Check out the Big 10 issue of Writer's Digest magazine, which includes my own list of 10 things for poets to consider. Click here to learn more.

Thursday, September 02, 2010 5:06:28 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [0] 

For this week's prompt, we're going to try something a little different. I want you to respond to this statement: "I'm going to set the world on fire." You can use that line as the title of your poem and/or in your actual poem. Or you can completely avoid that line, but write a poem as if you are going to (or already have) set the world on fire--whatever you take that to mean. Or you can refute the idea of someone else setting the world on fire. Or take it in a completely different direction. I can't wait to see how everyone decides to set this blog on fire with their hot writing.

Here's my attempt:

"Hiking through empty woods"

He splashed his face with creek water. Trees fell,
and we heard animals keep their distance
from us. I spotted minnows hiding near
smooth stones and laughed. He laughed too. Like lightning,
we knew by instinct how to cause thunder. 

*****

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Believe it or not, we actually have a writing instruction book for fiction writers titled The Fire in Fiction, by literary agent Donald Maass. It's also one of the top selling books over at the WritersDigestShop.com.

Click to continue.

Wednesday, September 01, 2010 2:30:58 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [85] 

For this week's prompt, I want you to take the phrase "Whatever (blank)," replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. Possible titles might include: "Whatever you say," "Whatever happens in Vegas stays in Vegas," "Whatever happened to my three-legged dog," or whatever else you can devise.

Here's my attempt:

"Whatever duh"

These new attitudes and stances
learned from school yard bullies and cool
kids. Reese thinks Stacy is "hot," and
I don't know whether to smile or
not. When I ask him what he wants
for dinner, he tells me--followed
by the word, "duh." And when I ask
him to pick up his books, he says,
"Whatever"--also followed by
"duh." As a parent, there's a war
of words: those to use and those to
let others use. As a poet,
I understand the need to play
with words and experiment with
expressions, but one more eye roll
and "whatever, duh" will result
in a six-year-old "time out." Duh.  

*****

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Want more poetic information and advice from a great poet? Then, check out Sage Cohen's Writing the Life Poetic. Click here to learn more.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010 2:07:06 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [196] 

One of my goals for this year is to try and get a poetry collection published, and I haven't ruled out self-publication if it comes to that. But I've been trying to go the traditional route by submitting to open submission periods and even a few contests. From interviews on Poetic Asides and my own experiences, there appear to only be a few ways to assemble collections:

1. Put together your "best" poems.
2. Arrange already written poems around a theme or themes.
3. Write poems specifically around a theme or themes.

I'm not sure that one technique is better or worse than another, but I started off doing the first option. Then, I tried the second option. Now, I'm actually in the middle of the third option, which has led to a lot of successful acceptances this summer.

Put together your "best" poems
This is kind of tricky. Are your best poems only the poems that have been published or that have won awards? Are they the most recent poems? And then, once you've established a "best of" collection, how do you organize them? Chronologically? By theme? By its sheer "bestness"?

(Visit Collin Kelley's blog to read an interesting take on good and bad poetry.)

Arrange already written poems around a theme or themes
If you do this, you may have to cut your "best" poems, because they may not fit the overall theme or smaller themes. For instance, I ran into this problem. Only some of what I consider my "best" poems deal with my own fatherhood. So, I had to cut them in one version of my poetry collection manuscript.

To solve this problem, I eventually cut my manuscript into several different themes. But then, I'm still not 100% crazy about the manuscript, so we'll see.

The problem really could be that despite having written thousands upon thousands of poems that I'm still not ready for a collection. Or maybe the process of putting together a collection has led me to...

Write poems specifically around a theme or themes
Yes, quite by accident, I started writing a series of poems this summer. So far, I've written 43 poems in the series, and 10 poems have already been accepted for publication (a remarkable accomplishment for me!). And the thing that holds these poems together is actually artificial: it's just an arbitrary form I devised that has no meaning at all for anyone.

(Click here to read one of the poems in the series, which actually had the form altered upon acceptance--which I totally approved.)

So maybe all the leg work of trying to put together a collection through the other two methods led to this one falling into my lap (the whole I get luckier the more I practice argument). I can say that writing around a specific theme, form, etc., has made the whole writing process very fun for me. I think it's because I have a box with specific rules within which to work, and my job has been to play in that box and try to bend it as much as possible without breaking the box.

So, what makes a great poetry collection?
That's a big question with many answers, but for me, I think it's any collection of poems that allows a reader to get lost. Maybe that means it's the best poems period. Maybe that means it's the best poems that speak to each other through a common theme or construct. Maybe that means it's a collection that is totally familiar or one that is totally unique.

Poetry is an art, which means it can't be pinned down to definitions of good and bad--because those are subjective values that change with each new reader. And poetry is not something that can be judged off quantities. One poem can easily outweigh 1,000 (or even a million) poems. Three lines could touch the heart in a way that an epic poem may not.

The truth is that we're ultimately left to our own devises and tastes to decide what should make the cut. Then, we send our poems and collections out into the world hoping they'll find friends.

*****

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Interested in trying to publish your poetry? Check out WritersMarket.com, which lists more than 8,000 publishing opportunities, including poetry publishers, publications, contests, and more.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010 9:01:26 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [17] 

This week, write a service poem. Originally, I was thinking of service as a car mechanic or server at a restaurant, but there's also military service and general services that people provide to each other every day--sometimes even free of charge. Writing poetry could even be considered a service that the poet provides to his or her readers.

Here's my attempt:

"Good intentions"

Yesterday, a lonely man spotted a penny,
which he picked up immediately, because he
thought they were rather lucky. "Maybe today, I'll
finally find love," he thought. Then, a woman smiled
and asked, "Do you, by chance, have some jumper cables?"

The lonely man did not, and he was headed out
to buy some bread. Still, he thought of the woman's mouth,
how it might kiss or smile from across a table
set for two. The lonely man bought a loaf of bread
and swung by Sears for jumper cables. He wanted
love and had a lucky penny in his pocket.

While there, he decided to purchase some socket
wrenches, because you can never have too many--
just like collecting a hundred lucky pennies.

*****

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Sure, no one can have too many socket wrenches or lucky pennies, but what about dictionaries? C'est impossible! Click here to learn more about The Poetry Dictionary, by John Drury.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010 2:56:21 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [205] 

A few poets have asked me over the past year to write up something about the blitz poem, which I'd never tried or even heard of before. So I did a little research, and it actually looks pretty fun. It was created by Robert Keim and is a 50-line poem of short phrases and images.

Here are the rules:

• Line 1 should be one short phrase or image (like "build a boat")
• Line 2 should be another short phrase or image using the same first word as the first word in Line 1 (something like "build a house")
• Lines 3 and 4 should be short phrases or images using the last word of Line 2 as their first words (so Line 3 might be "house for sale" and Line 4 might be "house for rent")
• Lines 5 and 6 should be short phrases or images using the last word of Line 4 as their first words, and so on until you've made it through 48 lines
• Line 49 should be the last word of Line 48
• Line 50 should be the last word of Line 47
• The title of the poem should be three words long and follow this format: (first word of Line 3) (preposition or conjunction) (first word of line 47)
• There should be no punctuation

There are a lot of rules, but it's a pretty simple and fun poem to write once you get the hang of it.

Here's my attempt:

"House of puddles"

Build a boat
Build a house
House for sale
House for rent
Rent to own
Rent a phone
Phone a friend
Phone home
Home alone
Home before bed
Bed and breakfast
Bed head
Head for cover
Head for the hills
Hills and valleys
Hills of gold
Gold rush
Gold for cash
Cash for gold
Cash that check
Check your messages
Check your back
Back in time
Back against the wall
Wall of noise
Wall fall down
Down with you
Down and out
Out and about
Out for the count
Count your blessings
Count the ways
Ways to live
Ways you smile
Smile and laugh
Smile like you mean it
It ain't no thang
It is what it is
Is it not
Is this poetry
Poetry is music
Poetry is love
Love your poetry
Love the rain
Rain falls down
Rain makes puddles
Puddles are wet
Puddles of love
Love...
Wet...

*****

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Monday, August 16, 2010 8:48:32 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [33] 

For this Writer's Digest Poetic Form Challenge, I'm asking poets to write a monotetra or three. Please don't stress out about the meter so much, because I won't. But the rhymes and refrains, yes, please follow the rules. If you're not sure, click here to learn more about the monotetra.

Many have already said it's a fun form, and I totally agree.

As in previous challenges, the winner will be featured in a future issue of Writer's Digest (the January 2011 issue to be precise).

The monotetra can be as short as one quatrain (or four-line stanza) and as long as a poet needs to get his or her rhyme on. So poem short, poem long, just poem.

Click here to read the general rules for the WD Poetic Form Challenge.

The deadline for the monotetra challenge is September 7, 2010. Or roughly three weeks. So get writing today!

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By the way, Writer's Digest is a great magazine for all walks of the writing lifestyle. There are many ways to receive the magazine, here are a few:

• Digital subscription
• Print subscription
• Or as part of the Writing VIP Program

Monday, August 16, 2010 3:52:57 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [96] 

There are many ways to try revising a poem; I hope that's a lesson that is delivered by these poetry workshops. Of course, another rule that I hope hits home is that there is no "one true way" to write a poem. The goal of any workshop is to point things out, make some suggestions, but ultimately leave it up to the poet to make a decision about how to revise. (By the way, click here to learn more about how you can workshop your poetry with other poets and an instructor.)

Such is the case with this week's workshop poem:

Untitled Poem, by Lesa Stember

I lie peacefully in my bed,

as my hopes flutter behind closed eyelids.

At the sound of his tiny cry,

I am shaken from my sleeping fantasy

where he does not quake.

Where every day does not bring a new foe.

Where I do not watch pieces of him jerk away.

I open my eyes and instead of daylight,

darkness consumes me.

Blinds me.

The abyss of the unknown invades every part of me.

Choking my hope.

My peace.

Chaos scrambles my thoughts.

Fear envelopes my world.

It burrows deep into my being,

and twines itself there like a tuber.

A permanent fixture in my soul.

Unreachable, it gnaws at me,

poking little holes in my security,

my certainty,

my future.

The holes become cavernous and I fall into them,

only to drown in the unrelenting quicksand of my fear.

Fear of tragic helplessness.

Fear of hurting him.

Fear of the metamorphosis of my family.

Fear of being alone,

of losing myself,

and greater yet,

of losing him

*****

Now, Lesa told me this untitled poem was written about the mother of an epileptic child. I have two general rules about poetry: 1. The poem should communicate its message without explanation from the poet, because the poet won't always be there to explain it; 2. Poems should have titles (unless there are rules against titling--as with haiku), because titles are a good framing device--even if the poem just uses the first line as a title. So, those are the two places I would focus my attention on in trying to revise this poem.

Let's start with the title. Since this poem starts off with the narrator waking up, I'd recommend making the title something that addresses the late/early time of day. Maybe something like "2:30 a.m."

I usually avoid epigraphs (a note or quotation that precedes a poem), but in some cases they can shed light on a poem. If you can find a very good and brief quotation addressing childhood epilepsy or parenting children with epilepsy, that might work wonders for this poem in setting the scene.

The next thing I would suggest is to change the narrative from first person to third person. Here's the reason: This poem is getting lost in abstractions and emotions. The most powerful poetry moves readers by provoking emotions, not by explaining them.

Here's an example of what I might try to do:

2:30 a.m.

 

She wakes to crying in her son's room again.

For a moment, she wishes she could get
a decent night's sleep, but then, she catches
herself. She stands up and rushes to his room,

which has gone silent. She thinks, no, no, no.

 

He's shaking in his crib, and she watches,

though it never gets easier. When he finishes,

he screams, and she picks him up, pats him

on the back. But nothing helps, nothing helps--
not rocking, not singing--nothing brings solace.

 

*****

 

That is just an example meant to show how the third person can help get a poet away from abstractions like "Fear of tragic helplessness" and "Fear envelopes my world." It's always a good idea to remember that poetry developed as a way to tell stories. So, don't be afraid of telling stories in your poems. And the best way to tell a story is to show, not tell, what is happening.

 

So, here is what I'd suggest for this poem (in bullet list form):

• Title the poem.
• Replace abstraction with specifics.
• Consider switching narrative voice from first person to third person.
• Consider hunting down a fitting epigraph. 

*****

 

These are my thoughts on the poems, but I encourage others to give their views as well in the comments below. My best workshop experiences have been those in which many writers gave me their suggestions, which I could then apply or ignore as I saw fit. So please help Lesa out.

 

I'd like to thank Lesa for offering up her poem. It's always a very brave act to share your poetry--even more so when you know that it's going to be poked and prodded in public. Thanks, Lesa!

 

*****

 

If you're interested in sharing a poem for workshop, click here to learn how to possibly make that happen.

 

*****

 

Follow me on Twitter @robertleebrewer

 

(I can also be found on Facebook and LinkedIn)

 

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Learn more about creating poetry with John Drury's Creating Poetry and The Poetry Dictionary. 

 

Poetry Workshop

Thursday, August 12, 2010 3:00:01 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [16] 

For this week's prompt, I want you to use the phrase "As I was saying" as a springboard into your poem. You can use it as the title of your poem or within your poem, but neither is mandatory. You could use it as motivation to write a poem about someone who's telling a story, or you could even write a poem in which the narrator cuts off the person who says, "As I was saying." Have fun with it.

Here's my attempt:

"As I was saying"

I'm not sure what to do when I see bees
suffering on the sidewalk. Should I step
on them, or let nature do its thing? These
are the things we're not taught in school. No pep
talks on the etiquette of life and death,
it's much easier to focus on x
plus y equals z. My own fragile breath
bends out of my body to what is next:
This bee buzzing on the sidewalk, it waits
for me to solve the equation: pain or
death? I suppose it takes a leap of faith
to arrive with all the correct answers.
Even then there is a buzzing ignored,
a rearranging of the integers.

*****

Follow me on Twitter @robertleebrewer

*****

Want to write metrical poetry?

Learn how with Writing Metrical Poetry, by William Baer.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010 2:20:03 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [130] 

The monotetra is a poetic form developed by Michael Walker. Here are the basic rules:

• Comprised of quatrains (four-line stanzas) in tetrameter (four metrical feet) for a total of 8 syllables per line
• Each quatrain consists of mono-rhymed lines (so each line in the first stanza has the same type of rhyme, as does each line in the second stanza, etc.)
• The final line of each stanza repeats the same four syllables
• This poem can be as short as one quatrain and as long as a poet wishes

Personally, I like the rhyme scheme and the repetitive final line of each stanza. I also appreciate the flexibility of this form in terms of how long or short the poem can be.

Here's my attempt:

"The view from up here"

We found a rock on the hilltop
that we used as reason to stop
and talk about our school's sock hop--
where music pops, where music pops.

She told me I should learn to dance,
but I was concerned with romance
and wanted to make an advance--
she said, "No chance;" she said, "No chance."

*****

Follow me on Twitter @robertleebrewer

*****

Live the life poetic with these resources:

• More than 20 other poetic forms
• Writing the Life Poetic, by Sage Cohen
• The Poetry Dictionary, by John Drury (which includes poetic forms, terms, and more)
• 2011 Poet's Market, edited by Robert Lee Brewer
• Advanced Poetry Writing workshop

Tuesday, August 10, 2010 10:07:28 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [46]