::mslexia workshops::

Write on the Wild Side #20
a writing workshop with Margaret Wilkinson

THEME: POETRY FOR PROSE WRITERS

INTRODUCTION

I'VE PUT together some exercises to help prose writers create some poems; writing poetry can give spark and focus to your prose.

When beginning to write poetry it’s important to stay as concrete as possible. Find solid images – objects for instance – to represent your big themes, intense emotions and cherished ideas.

EXERCISES

#1
The secret life of objects
Start by setting up a still life of four ordinary, unrelated objects. Here are a few examples: a styrofoam cup, a single shoelace, a bunch of keys, a suitcase.

• In a paragraph of prose, describe one of these objects without naming it. Avoid feelings, interpretation, or commentary.
For example: Instruments of iron lie on my desk. They are employed for slowly moving the bolts of a lock forwards or backwards. One is long and heavier than the rest. It fits into the exact space contrived for it.

There is something scary about this. I was just describing my keys, but what I’ve written makes me think of torture. I’d write on, perhaps, detailing the shadow the keys cast, or the desk beneath, then add a last sentence exploring my apprehensions. I might title the piece ‘At work.’ (I think I must need a holiday.)
If you discover something emotional lurking behind your unemotional prose you might add an appropriate title, or a last sentence, revealing how you feel about this object and/or what it means to you.

• Your second object is magical. Who does it belong to and how is it used? In a paragraph of intense prose, describe a single fantastical event that is influenced by this object.

• Describe the third object as if you were a child; a blind person; a giant; a dog; a drunk.

• The fourth object is something lost when you were a child. Don’t worry if your memory is hazy. If an object is not directly in front of us, we are often forced into a creative twilight where we envision things strangely and passionately.

#2
Bring your objects to life
Personification means giving something inanimate – an object, an abstract concept, a physical state, a feature of the landscape, a plant – human emotions, opinions, personality. Whatever I see I swallow immediately. This is Sylvia Plath’s mirror talking:

'Mirror' by Sylvia Plath.

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful –
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises towards her day after day, like a terrible fish.

Return to your still life. Now become the fourth object and answer the following questions in first person as if you were that object. Answer each question as a single complete sentence. Vary your sentences’ lengths and the way they begin.

What do you do all day?
What is your skin like?
What is your greatest fear?
What happens to you in the heat?
What is the first thing you remember?
What do you think about people?
What’s inside you?
What sounds remind you of your past?
What do you imagine will become
of you?
What is the most secret thing you know?

Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall. Did Sylvia Plath try this exercise?

• Place each of your objects in a landscape: a styrofoam cup in the bottom of a bin; one shoelace lying at the edge of the sea; a key in a dark pocket; a suitcase in a hotel bedroom. Give these objects a human emotion. An angry styrofoam cup in the bottom of a bin; a frightened ring of keys buried in a dark pocket. Then write a monologue from the point of view of one of these objects.

• In Plath’s poem, a jealous mirror hangs in a woman’s bedroom: Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon./I see her back and reflect it faithfully.

#3
Arrange them on the page
Much of the intensity of poetry is due to selection and compression. By this I am not referring to a telegraphic, staccato use of language; rather the recreation of an image, incident, or moment in the poem. Always try to write in proper sentences. Refine rather than edit down. Notice how Plath writes in whole sentences: Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me/Searching my reaches for what she really is.

For any of the paragraphs of prose you’ve written, choose four to seven sentences you like (they needn’t be continuous). Swap the order of these sentences around until you’re satisfied. Now set them out on the page as a free verse poem. Free verse means the lines of the poem do not have end rhymes.

The end of a line is determined entirely by you. Create either long or short line breaks. The purpose of a line break is to create tension and interest using the last word of one line as a springboard for the next. Try to avoid having a complete sentence, or a complete thought, per line. Keep the reader moving through the poem by breaking the line before a thought is complete. This is called enjambment. It also makes interesting accidents happen.