I
find that poetry changes the way in which you see the world; the more you
write, read and engage with poetry, the more you notice. Eyes, once immature
and full of glances, learn to focus, to be steady and to be patient. Like the
zoom lens on a camera, life-size is magnified. Thought, rather than being
merely an okra seed, becomes a coiled woodlouse; an armoured marble; an
ammonite carved into snakestone, complete with the legend of Saint Hilda.
In
poetry, it is not the form or the size of the poem that determines whether it
could be classified as large or small, but rather it is the subject, the
thought, or the idea contained within the parameters of the form. For example,
the haiku is small (with its seventeen
syllables), yet its subject is often thought, traditionally, to be great –
starting with a macro view of the world and then becoming more specific (the
micro view).
Often,
within my own poetry, I find myself using this macro/micro technique –
beginning with a large image and then zooming in on a smaller detail. It is these
little, usually unnoticed, observations that create the depth and prevent the
poem from being merely a backdrop. You want to surprise the reader: tell them
something new, give them a different view of the world.
Recycling
Compost
and soot from allotment bonfires
is
forked into the freshly dug soil.
Old
wardrobes and skirting boards
are
cut to make raised beds.
A rusty
swing frame is draped with green netting –
ready
for when the runner beans start to climb.
Thank
you for reading,
Lara
Lara
4 comments:
Excellent post (as always).
I have to ask - what are those things in the picture?
Ash
I have always favoured an aphoristic style of poetry and it’s rare for any of my poems to be more than a few lines long. Longer poems are fine where there’s a narrative—‘Tam o’ Shanter’ or ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’—but, for me, compression is everything. I often say, “Say what you have to say and get off the page.” I’m also fond of punch lines—which your poem lacks—because I think it’s particularly helpful to the reader to go out with a bang, a bit like the moral at the end of a fable. Had this been my poem I would have probably added, as a final line: “What goes around comes around.” Zooming in on images is fine but without a setting or a context it’s sometimes hard to join the dots. I find this with art. Sometimes I’ll look at a diptych (or a triptych in your case) and struggle to see the connection between the images. This is where a creative title, as opposed to a label—which I’m as guilty as the next poet for using—helps so, rather than adding that extra line, changing the title to ‘What Goes Around Comes Around’ might work better. This is just me thinking out loud of course. It’s your poem and I don’t mean to criticise. I’m just trying to illustrate how I might have tackled the material.
Great post and I like the images in the poem, Lara.
(I'd just like to say that were I you and had I written this poem, I'm fairly sure it would have come out word for word exactly the same.)
Lara, you always make me notice the little things I hadn't spotted. I think it's something you are exceptionally good at. Evocation. That's what you do :)
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