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How
I go about my writing
This is quite tricky for me to write about. I try not to
think too hard about it. Most of my writing, whether lyric
poems, picture book texts, or narratives, is in verse. So
I'm usually trying to find my way into a pattern of rhythm
and rhyme. Even when I start off in blank verse, I often
find there's a point where the piece naturally breaks into
verse.
I often start out with a chunk of very ordinary speech.
For instance: Here's my hat . or:
Today you may be small, or: I dreamed I saw the
Unicorn last night . Most chunks of ordinary speech
will suggest a rhythm, if spoken naturally & listened to.
Out of that rhythm you hear, you can grow a whole poem.
Poems can be squeezed or teased out of small or ordinary
things. The marvellous is usually found at home, close by,
in normal, plain things: a pip, a mug, a stone, a puddle.
It's a question of looking at, inspecting, considering,
questioning the things, using the language to do this. Sometimes
the poem can be used to question or talk to the thing directly:
Don't be so glum, plum.
or: Little pebble, tiny stone, / you were lying all
a/one
A story can be a starter for poetry. You can use verse,
or poetry, to actually retell a story, as in my Selkie
Bride. Or a poem can celebrate some part or aspect of
a story, a detail or corner of it, say, for instance, the
flask that holds tie genie in an Arabian Nights tale. Or
the flying carpet as in my Magic Carpet
One good way to start out on a poem is to use a model.
Find a poem you like. Let's say its "My Hat! at
the beginning of my book Plum. Get to know how the poem
works and what it says. Then use its pattern and general
idea to make a poem of your own, either
a) by writing your poem about a hat of your own
orb) by changing the subject, but treating it in a similar
way, e.g.: My Boots! or My Coat!
Try going through several poetry books and see the different
ways that poems begin. You could even try borrowing a first
line and coaxing a poem from it in your own way. I have
some poems which start from borrowed lines:
My bed is like a little boat (R. L. Stevenson)
I saw three ships come sailing by (traditional)
So there are a few ways into the deep, dark wood of poetry
writing. Try them if you like, or see if you can come up
with ways of your own.
Advice
to Young Writers (a few suggestions by Tony Mitten,
author of Plum, flap Rhymes series etc.) written for James
Carter's Talking Books I Poetry
Look at lots of poetry and try to find how many things a
poem can be. Poems come in many shapes and sizes, many types
and forms. If you find a poet or a kind of poetry you really
like, get to know that poetry well. You may like to try
writing a bit like that yourself. It's alright, especially
early on, to copy other writers a bit. They may be doing
things you'd like to do yourself. Eventually you'll develop
a voice of your own, the more you write.
On the other hand, you may have strong ideas about things
you want to say, or ways of writing, that you can't find
in the books you look at. if that's the case, do it, just
do it, and see how far you can take it, what you can make
it into. Many poets break new ground by being impatient
with the poetry they find around them. And by making something
they think is new, of their own.
Whether you think about it or not, there are 3 or 4 areas
in which a poem is working, at least:
1. The ideas --the argument, story, content, call it what
you like, of the poem. The overall "game the poem is
playing. What the poem is saying, serious, funny, thoughtful,
deep, playful, whatever.
2. The imagery-- the kind of pictures in the head the poem
makes.
3. The music-- the kind of way the poem uses the sounds
of the language, its rhythms and maybe rhymes or lack of
them. The way it makes you listen to its texture of sound.
4. The area of feeling -- this may be dependent on 1, 2
& 3. But one should not forget that poetry can rise out
of strong feeling, and it can effect strong feeling in its
readers or listeners. If you're writing a poem, you'll be
working with and managing some kind of feeling, whether
heavy or light.
Write with your head and your heart. Sometimes one will
lead, sometimes the other. Sometimes they'll struggle together
and maybe contradict each other. If you're really writing
poetry you'll be thinking and feeling.
If you want to write well you need to become an expert with
words and language. You need to be as skilful with words
as a painter is with paints or a composer is with sounds.
You've got to care about every word, every pause, every
last detail of what you put.
And then you've got to be prepared to ignore everything
I've just written, because you're the one writing your poem
and only you can know best how to do it. That's the place
writers write from, making their mind up as they go along.
© Tony Mitton
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