I went to poetry club and forgot how to write
Whimsy on a Wednesday bringing you a small adventure into rhyme & reason
I went to a poetry club last week. And the reason I went is because I like to write a bit of verse now and then. Anyway, this event popped up on my social feed, as they do when I’m thinking about a thing. It’s like Voodoo. Lately, I’ve been thinking about myself lying on a sun bed by the infinity pool located in the gardens of my beautiful house built into a Cornish bluff whilst the live-in-chef prepares a Dover sole and a cold glass of Chablis. However, I keep waking up in the same place so it’s not working. Perhaps greed and avarice are not part of the deal. There’s no poetic justice in that, is there?
So, back to poetry…
I found out that this lady has poems published in and around the area and is a local success in the writing of Free Verse. She also runs a monthly club/workshop.
Well, that got my attention.
What is free verse?
This has always been a thing that irks and confuses me in equal measure. For a start off, there are no rules. That’s what it is says when you look up how to free verse like a boss laureate. You can basically write whatever you want.
Ok, so how is it different from just writing then? What differentiates it from prose?
It’s conversational. Try and think like that.
So is it dialogue?
Can be, or monologue. Just write naturally.
Like prose then.
No. It’s different, there’s a structure of sorts.
Ah, so there are rules then?
No.
WHAT?
No rules.
No meter.
No rhyme.
Just freedom to express.
What a load of cobblers you big fat liar! (Is that free verse?)
The more I have looked into this the more I believe it is a secret society of genius poets with locked up rules that only they know about. It’s like the Freemasons for writers. Only they know how to be rhythmic conversationalists in a free style that lends itself to verse and published poetry. Only they know how to break the lines at particular nouns and verbs to give emphasis and structure. All of which are rules, by the way, even though there aren’t any.
You don’t use any punctuation, not really, though you can sometimes. You have to break at the right point instead. And it kind of flows, you know?
No. I don’t know. And even if I have done it, I’ve done it unwittingly and I am very much a person that likes to try and get to grips with a thing.
Trying to make sense of this poetic composition,
Reading like you told me, like this is a conversation,
Hey! Stop the punctuation (!)
Its not clinical, it’s lyrical
It sometimes seems political
But if I’m being truthful I find it most equivocal
Oh wait!
I’m not supposed to rhyme
I forgot about that order
Or playing by the rules and just learning
creating a big picture
A story for the person reading this adventure
Do you get it
I don’t get it
am I about to make a break
or should I forget the whole dalliance
of words with tempo and flow
and go back to doing something I do understand
I think
I’m going
to paint a scene
I’m often unsure about attending a club for all the obvious reasons but I thought I’d give this one a go. I was greeted very kindly but managed to get my arm stuck on the door handle by catching a piece of clothing. When a guy stuck his right hand out to shake “hello” I had to use my left because I was stuck. Right hand meets left hand doesn’t work so we just stood there with hands out. I dropped my new book on the floor and and apologised for being awkward.
The lady poet who runs the class smiled and said, “You’re in the right place then.”
Until my first sentence…
The initial task was to write how you were feeling using an adjective and a noun. Once you’d written something down you were asked to swap the adjective with the person to your left and use that in your sentence and then read it out loud as an ice-breaker.
‘I feel as excited as a clown at a funeral’. I said to the class.
It was immediately after that I felt as though I shouldn’t really be in a poetry club.
There were many other exercises that I enjoyed and some reading of contemporary and old poems. The skilful poets in the class sang out their five minute scribbles and sounded like modern day bards that had fully mastered their poetic art. I felt thoroughly out of my depth and a little bit disturbed at the sinister attempts written in my book.
The milky white rash on an out-of-date Mars bar,
starched, cotton mouthed, too long on the line,
dry driving in a heated jalopy to the scrapyard of tomorrow.
Yeah. I didn’t read that out. In fact, I didn’t read anything out at all and just sat there taking it all in and quietly doing the work in my notebook which only made me look more weird than usual. I could have topped it off nicely by putting my emergency clown nose on but… baby steps.
We didn’t even touch on the topic of free verse so If anyone out there feels as though they might be able to educate me without confusion, please, go ahead.