::mslexia author method::

The Kathleen Jamie Method
From Interview no. 9

• Ensure you have an A5 notebook and pen with you at all times.

• Embark on an extended journey to somewhere extremely remote and hot, where no-one speaks English. Failing that, cultivate a state of heightened awareness, in which you are able to perceive significance in objects and events. (As this state is similar to being in love, beware of confusing the two and wasting good writing time on fruitless relationships)

• In particular, open yourself to spurious connections between apparently unrelated objects, people and events.

• When such a connection or significance suggests itself to you as being especially intriguing or puzzling, write it down in your notebook. This is the inspiration for your next poem.

• Do not attempt to control when these insights occur. All you can do is watch for them and catch them when they do.
If you are fortunate, your first idea will be followed over the next week or so by three or four others. Write these down too. Although they may not seem immediately relevant to one another, or to the first idea, trust that your subconscious knows what it is doing.

• Time to go to your desk and make notes relating to these ideas. Do not be systematic. ‘Skittery’ and ‘incoherent’ is what’s needed. Your creative mind is like a coat pocket, full of coins, bus tickets, bits of fluff, buttons, sweeties. You need to empty it out completely to find what you’re after.

• Don’t worry about direction. Just ensure that everything that might belong in the poem – words, ideas, phrases, fragments, whole lines – are all written on one page.

• Now develop these notes into something bigger. The material has to swell and swell before it can contract into a finished poem. Try out ideas, phrases, alongside one another. Write down any additional associations. Scrape the lining of your pocket for every last vestige of fluff. (There are no short cuts with this process. You have to empty out all that rubbish in order to find the things of value.)

• Write or type everything out clearly and look at it again with fresh eyes.

• Now start winnowing: gradually sift until the volume is reduced by three-quarters and you can see what the poem wants to be. (NB This is not the same thing as understanding what the poem wants to say. You may not fully understand the poem until long after you have written it. In this sense, the process of writing a poem is a process of exploration rather than exposition. Once you have clarified the issues for yourself the creative impulse dissolves.)

• At last you’re ready to start the finicky work of crafting the actual poem: ordering the ideas, deciding what shape it should be.

• Work line by line, comma by comma, testing the sound of vowels and consonants against one another. Be fierce with anyone who tries to come between you and your desk.
The whole process – from inkling to completion – takes an average of five weeks. So you aim to complete a collection of 50 poems every five years or so.
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Don’t worry about direction. Just ensure that everything that might belong in the poem – words, ideas, phrases, fragments, whole lines – are all written on one page.