Ever thought about writing a poem? Why not take the leap?
In a new series, award-winning poet Jessica Traynor shares insights to help you find your voice.
Because I am supposed to be working on a new project, I am instead watching YouTube interviews with film director Robert Eggers.
He talks a lot about the world of his films as 'his dollhouse' – a term he uses not just to mean the set, but the small theatrical/filmic bubble in which his characters interact and co-exist. All narrative art creates the illusion of a lack of boundary, yet writers must set these boundaries carefully, in order to keep their characters in place. In theatre, it’s the stage, in film, the parameters of setting and location, and in poetry, it’s form.
In poetry, we have so many choices around form. We can use free verse, but abide by certain metric choices in order to create a set of constraints for ourselves. We can use rhyme, which comes its own diktats, not just about end-rhyme word choices, but around that metre that the particular rhyme scheme suggests. We can also venture into more adventurous territory with sonnets, villanelles, sestinas, pantoums.
Watch: What makes a poem … a poem? via TedTalks
All of this can sound off-putting – what if I do all this work to fit my poem into a tiny box, and then I realise I’ve broken one of the rules? Am I allowed reshape the sonnet form, or take liberties with a sestina, or will I be laughed at by people who know more than me? Recently, there was some online debate over whether the sonnets in Diane Seuss’s brilliant collection frank were indeed sonnets – they are 14 lines, yes, but many unspool across the page and they don’t follow the rhyme scheme of traditional Petrarchan or Shakespearean sonnets (although Seuss has stated that she does hold, somewhat, with the sonnet’s metre and her sonnets do feature a ‘volta’, or turn).
In poetry, we have so many choices around form.
This example should prove a good test for you, reader. If your response to Seuss’s amendment of the form is, ‘So what? Language and form are evolving all the time’, then I’d encourage you to give some forms of poetry a try without worrying too much about getting it wrong. If your response is to shudder at the bending of the rules, you should still give form a try – but maybe you will want to cleave more closely to convention. This might mean making the effort to do a little more reading around the use of these forms, which is always a good discipline in any case.
The only thing I would recommend to you as individuals, no matter what your take on the above debate is, is to consider why you feel the particular poem you want to write should live inside your chosen form. Does the gift match the gift box? Or are you playing the old can-of-snakes trick on the reader? If so, why? These questions don't have to be overtly addressed in the work, but considering them can save you a lot of time in the editing process.
Diane Seuss is a national treasure pic.twitter.com/cp2rlRq40i
— Robert Wood Lynn (@RobertWoodLynn) August 15, 2022
For me, form is a constraint which can spark creative responses, forcing us to work harder. Diane Seuss says of the sonnet: ‘The sonnet, like poverty, teaches you what you can do/ without.’
In my own experiments with form, I now enjoy the challenge. But I still sometimes find that the poem is resting awkwardly in the little dollhouse that I’ve constructed for it. If that’s the case, I take it out, let it breathe, and see what form it takes.
