Hunting the Generated Subject - by Rowena House

It’s the last lap, the final six weeks of a six-and-a-half year creative writing PhD, which, terrifyingly, has taken up (or, at least, often took over) one-tenth of my lifetime.

I’m line-editing and proof-reading at the moment, ten pages a day of an 80K manuscript, cut down from 87K at its longest. It’s mad to try to do both at the same time, but that’s how it’s turned out and by this stage I’m not questioning my process, just getting on with it.

Hopefully, I’ll have time to read it through again on the iPad in a different format as reformatting always seems to throw up those glaringly obvious typos that have slipped past me, oh, probably hundreds of times.

I’m getting all sorts of deja-vu with the comparable stage of editing The Goose Road, my debut for young readers. Like asking, where did I put that sentence I liked so much, and really worked? And, for goodness sake, what on earth were you on about there?

There’s also been a nice moment of circularity or closure this month. 

Right at the start of this project, when Arvon began online masterclasses during Covid lockdowns, I listened to author Hisham Matar recommending that we stay open creatively during our first drafts (which I’ve taken to mean over multiple drafts) so that we don’t get trapped by our original idea and fail to access our deeper level of intuitive invention.

That became a kind of mantra for this novel: stay open to whatever comes along. 

 

 

Then, on August 7th, an email came in from Writers.com, an American organisation which I often find useful and thank very much for all their inspiration. This email offered up a notion from poetry which struck a chord. The article is by Sean Glatch, whom I’ve quoted here before, and is titled, Writing Titles of Poetry: How to Title a Poem, which has a lovely internal rhythm, which I guess is the point.

Mr. Glatch quoted Richard Hugo’s The Triggering Town, which he called ‘a great grounding in the craft and mindset of poetry writing’. To quote him quoting Mr. Hugo:

To Hugo, all poems have two subjects:

· The Initiating Subject: the topic, idea, or thing that led you into writing a poem.

· The Generated Subject: the subject that the poem discovers or was actually, secretly, about the whole time.

I really like this idea. It makes a whole lot of sense. For the work-in-progress, a seventeenth-century witch trial was the initiating subject, and the importance of writing to critical thinking is the generated subject.

Looking back, I realise I spent a lot of time in the early years trying to think up a generated subject, to plan it, to plot it, to do exactly what Hisham Matar said you shouldn’t do. It’s the theme thing, innit. We’re supposed to know it, but if it’s the storytelling that generates it, how can one plan it?

They say that writing a novel is new each time around. If there is another one in me, I’ll try very hard to remember this lesson and stop hunting for a theme and let it wade out of the story sea in its own good time.

All the best, everyone. Nearly there. 

 

APRIL & NATIONAL POETRY WRITING MONTH by Penny Dolan

Today, April 1st, is the start of National Poetry Writing Month, which celebrates its twenty-fifth birthday this year. Hooray and well done!

Personally, I rather wish that the acronyms – NaPoWriMo or GloPoWriMo in the worldwide version, or even that Na/GloPoWriMo version - sounded more poetical. They remind me, spoken aloud, of a vocal exercise, good for ten repetitions as a warm up before giving a poetry performance. But that’s acronyms for you.


This year I feel a little bad, not about the daily writing prompt but because I have two boxes of poetry books in the hall, both on their way out of the door. They will be going to a nearby Oxfam shop or similar: one box is full of children’s poetry, while the other holds ‘grown-up’ poems. But now, both are sitting in the hall sulking, reminding me of that statistic that shows more people write poetry than read it, and silently asking me why I am getting rid of them now, eh? But I have read them, I have used them and now they need to go.


Several were really useful when I was part of a monthly Poetry Reading group, which had some great sessions. We met with the simple aim of reading other people’s poems, never our own. This meant that the group could also include friends and partners who simply enjoyed poetry. We began with a list of named poets, set one per month and used the four weeks to find out more about their life and work, both through books or online. Then we met, bringing our thoughts and favourite poems to share at the next meeting. Occasionally, we chose poems around a theme instead, bringing four or five poems to read aloud and share. I must say that hearing the lines that you’d read and knew inside your head suddenly voiced and out there in that shared room could be magical. Ah well, that was then - and the small group is now a memory: a social casualty of the Covid era. Moments of the past, as the boxes of books will soon be.


I still have a lot of poetry books and anthologies here: mostly old favourite poems and poets where the language or spirit spoke to me, or to the person I was at that time, and still does. Rather like favourite song lyrics, I suppose. Can't let go.

   

But as for today, the first of April, and that daily poetry challenge? Will it be a good idea for me or not? As soon as I have a ‘Hmm, this is me sort of writing a poem’ thought in my mind, the old poetry worries start muttering.

Some anxieties spring from the host of poetic forms and rhythms and structures out there. Can one work on a poem ‘seriously’ without all that in your skill-set? Hopefully, if you are familiar with poetry at some level, the patterns and shapes reveal themselves as you think and voice the seed of the poem over and over in your head. Or so I hope and trust.

At a practical level, the daily NaPoWriMo email, once you have signed up for it, can be a useful source of inspiration and information. Each day brings a new writing prompt, which often links to a suggested structure, so gradually the month becomes a reminder of the variety of poetic forms, both traditional and contemporary. 

Of course, the email can simply be dipped into for any interesting knowledge, letting the writer carry on with their own ideas for the day. With no obligation, no posting poems online and no need to become ‘part of the community’, unless that is what is wanted. The writer can choose.

However, there’s another anxiety that comes with poetry for me: a fear of exposure, of being too seen. Fiction is wonderful for giving the writer a disguise, a way of hide themselves behind the clothes and the characters and story. Poetry often feels closer to the maker, gives more obvious evidence of their moods and thoughts, and there's the uncertainty. What will happen if my work reveal ‘louder’ voices than I use in my everyday person? Will the bare-faced writing reveal moods and thoughts I’d rather keep secret? Bring on an unfamiliarly confident tone? Will I even know who I am a month of focused poetry-making? Thank heaven one’s work can be kept private. 

For now, the focus is on Day One . . .


Hope you have a good April and happy celebrations, with or without poetry.

Penny Dolan


ps. I felt I should end with something to honour the day, so here are some thoughts on a particularly annoying poetic form. Are you ready? Here goes . . .


Ain’t gonna do one
Can‘t make me write one
Really, who needs one
Over-worked trick?
Show me no poet ways,
Throw me no poet praise,
I ain’t gonna go for it, ain’t gonna stick, ain’t gonna do that A-
Crostic.

HERE COMES POETRY DAY - and a Poem from Penny Dolan

At the start of September, on social media, teachers started asking about poetry books and anthologies Then came art work inspired by poems and requests for poems on curricular themes. Some asked for poets who were ‘good at school visits’, some lamented the costs, while others posted links to free poetry videos. 

Why the rush? Then something clicked. Of course! The reason for the buzz! This week there’s a big celebration:

THURSDAY 3RD OCTOBER

is

NATIONAL POETRY DAY.

And there’s plenty of information about it on the Poetry Day website. 

                                     

However, what caught my interest was the theme chosen for this 30th Birthday Party:

‘COUNTING’

Counting? Not a fan of maths, I shook my head. What did counting make me think about, other than abacus and number work in long-ago reception classrooms? 

But after I let the word sit in my mind for a while, I decided that 'counting' didn’t seem such an odd choice after all.

After all, poetry works through a subtle counting of the patterns and rhythms within the piece. Consciously or unconsciously, readers or listeners become aware of the pulse, hear the beat within the poet’s words.

There’s a whole poetic vocabulary dedicated to this quiet counting, full of terms like metre, iambic pentameter, trochees, stanzas and so on. But what I’m thinking about is the deep rhythmic play within poems, that pattern that creates an almost-physical response, adds a sense of movement and anticipation and the satisfaction as the pattern reaches its end.

Poetry can be about the idea of the voice counting, being of merit, having words that need to be heard. This could be one single voice, offering unique thoughts or a whole range of voices that, now, need to be expressed and heard.

Poetry is also a form of accounting: poetry notices. It bears witness to people and places and times; it marks celebrations and changes; it says that this or that happened and it mattered to one person and maybe to many.

Poetry counts, too, as part of our personal lives: many people read and rely on certain poems and poets. People often carry their own inner anthology of poems in their head, even as a mix of half-remembered lines and verses. Poetry sits there in the the memory, ready to be savoured, a kind of comfort during the dark moments, as words for the happier times and as evidence of life between. Yes, Poetry counts. I’ll go with that. Wonder what the Society actually say on their website? 

Meanwhile, in another mode and mood entirely, and for anyone still in search of that ideal, elusive Visiting Poet, here’s my own, slightly-sideways tongue-in- cheek version. As they say 'Enjoy’ - and have a good Poetry Day too!

        THE POET THAT KNOWS IT

        I am a Visiting Poet

        I am tall and fit and lean

        I can jump about for hours

        And I bring a sound machine.

        I wear eccentric clothing

        Because Poets often do,

        And in my school performances

        Will often mention poo.

        I am beardy and I’m hairy

        (As schools prefer A Man)

        Add wacky words and laughter

        And all the jokes I can.

        I can tick the box for empathy

        With well-timed sighs or tear:

        (Poetic Finances are tight

        I’ll need more work next year.)

        I do pets, cakes, friends and bullies,

        Weather, sport and football teams

        And if I do the ‘Key Stage Two’,

        Have verse to make them scream.

        I set the children buzzing,

       Using similes galore

       They chant and stamp out rhythms

       Till there’s puddles on the floor.

        I perform five sessions daily,

        Full of Poet Energy

        So the teachers can feel certain

        That they’ve had their worth of me.

        I cram the kids with poems,

        With fun and joy and cheer,

        ‘Cos when Poetry Day is over,

        They’ll have none until next year.

        But sat at home, I’m quiet,

        I dream and think and muse.

        Or go out poetry walking

        In ordinary person shoes.

        I see my friends and neighbours

        And stare up at the sky,

        And no-one knows this silent soul’s

        That ‘Visiting Poet’ guy.

        By Penny Dolan (copyright)