learning to read, learning to listen

Recently, I’ve had conversations with two different writers – one a poet, the other a novelist – about the art and craft of writing. My fellow writers found themselves at something of a disadvantage, as both of them come from non-English speaking backgrounds, while both were attempting to express themselves by writing in the English language.

I find English to be a tricky language. It is not written quite the way that it is spoken, and the rules of grammar focus on sentence construction more than they do (in my opinion, at least) to the way the language is spoken, or the ways in which it is heard by a listener.

How difficult must it be for a writer who has English only as a second language.

Actually, never mind that writer, I can declare that it is more than difficult enough for me, a person who uses it in various forms of written or spoken expression every day in the pursuit of my craft.

It was the experience of reading my work to live audiences that started to seriously impact on the way I wrote my stories and verse, because I found that I could not retain mastery of long passages of writing. I lost my sense of rhythm, of lilt and nuance. I found that a comma was not of great assistance in determining when I should pause for emphasis, or to take a breath. Apostrophes were ruinous.

Music addresses these issues, but written English, in my view, does not.

Take a look at the passage I’ve written into the table below. Above is my group of sentences. Three in total, on two lines, so not such a great mass of writing.

Below, the same sentences are presented in the style I use for my readings.

How often do we pause to breathe? What nuance, what inflection do we use when we speak?

How is it that, when you speak, I hear music?
how often 
do we pause 
to breathe

what nuance
what 
inflection 
do we use 
when we speak

how is it 
that
when you speak

hear music
Elaboration of reading/breathing style in poetry – Frank Prem

What are the features of the rewritten sentences in the lower pane of the box?

  • There is minimal or no punctuation to distract me. As a matter of routine, I use only a capital letter for the personal pronoun (‘I’), and an apostrophe for contractions (it is = it’s).
  • I have inserted a line break at each point (to my ear) of emphasis or inflection, equating to a short – sometimes almost imperceptible – pause.
  • I have employed a stanza break where I believe a pause is needed for breath.

What I’ve found in practice is that this use of short line structures and the search for emphasis points allows me to also find the music that is inherent in the language. Remember I trade in the craft of free verse – no rhyming to set the rhythm and cadence. The free verse form needs to find the music that is hidden in the song of day-to-day speech or it becomes difficult to read as poetry.

I have also found that when inviting a member of the audience to join me on stage (as I do, sometimes) the experience is less daunting for my unwitting co-reader, and quite straightforward for them to read coherently and without significant stumbles.

I think about this in a context that I recall, of children trying to read aloud while standing at the front of their class – book held up high, nose down low to the page and an unbroken gabble of words pouring out. The pause being, generally, to allow a moist, nasal sniff, as the reader comes up for air.

What advice did I offer to my two writing friends each with their different language backgrounds?

Listen, first, to your native speech. Listen in order to find and hear the music hidden within it. The cadences and metre of speech and the song that belong to that language.

Then, listen to English. Break it down until you can find your own sense of song in this language. That is when your English writing will begin to run more smoothly.

5 thoughts on “learning to read, learning to listen

  1. Dwight L. Roth

    This is great Frank! I never really thought about it before, but the vertical reading is so much easier than paragraph reading. Perhaps that is why I enjoy poetry so much. The occurs when I read posts of others. I like seeing the poem rather than seeing it in paragraph form and then telling me to continue. Simple is much better than complicated!

    1. Frank Prem Post author

      Hi Dwight,

      I found it necessary when I was first reading to an audience, and have developed it as my style since. I’m delighted that it makes sense to others. Nothing quite so lonely as being the only one.

      Unless you object, I’ll pop your address in my email list.

      Cheers,

      Frank

  2. Kaz

    That’s quite a dramatic difference. You’re quite right when you say that punctuation is not necessarily a help, and that rules of grammar focus on sentence construction more than understandability (not a grammatical word, haha!).

    1. Frank Prem Post author

      Hi Kaz.

      Thank you.

      I’m at a point where I know this approach works for me, but the test will be when I invite audience and perhaps students to join me and take over some of the reading.

      A subsequent article will focus on multiple ‘voices’ in a poem, and I hope to develop some duet work that I can use in class settings. Not that I’ve done any class work to date, mind. But I hope to go that way.

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