Friday 25 November 2011

I'm not a poet



Yesterday I went to my writing workshop. About ten times a year a small group of us gather, brace ourselves with tea and biscuits and then dive in for three hours' writing and workshopping. I love it, and being invited to join a few years back is what finally jolted me into taking my fiction writing seriously.

We alternate between short fiction and poetry. I'm really not a poet, as you can see from my attempt yesterday afternoon at found poetry, based on the Brownie Guide promise:

If
the Queen and God
promise
to do their duty
and help other people

I promise
to do my best
too.

That was our warm up, and we did get rather more serious after that.

Some of the others are poets and some of us are more likely to write short fiction when left to our own devices, but although I've never produced a poem of any depth or flair, the attempt often sparks off trains of thought that lead a while later to a story. And even writing bad poetry is a real encouragement to be brave with language, to take risks, to not always go for the linear or the obvious metaphor.

Having said that, I do sometimes have to rein myself in. There's a fine line between poetic and purple prose, between something powerful, that makes the reader sit up and pay attention - and something that's simply self-indulgent. It can of course be a matter of taste - recently a friend and I were discussing the opening to Jon McGregor's If nobody speaks of remarkable things, which I love - it's like a panning shot, swooping across the city, and it's amazingly fluid. My friend, though, said 'God, it feels just like a creative writing exercise - I hate it!'.

And I know what she means. Perhaps it is a bit over-written. But I luxuriated in it - it's such a rare pleasure in a novel for the writer to be clearly relishing the language. Give me more, I say.

But not too much.

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