Thank you, Cheryl.
A quick insightful read from Frank Prem.
Check out poetry on his website here: https://frankprem.wordpress.com.
I was delighted to receive this book from Amazon yesterday. I enjoy Frank’s observance of every day things and this anthology of growing up brought back memories of my own childhood.
I enjoyed it very much!
https://rugby843.blog
via Guess what came in the mail today – Review — The Bag Lady
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 I hear music |
What are the features of the rewritten sentences in the lower pane of the box?
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.
Recently I had opportunity to participate in a writing exercise run by
Australian Speculative Fiction, and requiring a complete story to be written out of the contemplation of a photographic image posted on their ASF Facebook site.
Writing to images is an activity that I have done a great deal of in recent times and I find contemplation of images is a rewarding pastime that can add an extra dimension to a piece of writing. For example, in my work I seek to create word imagery. I like my reader to be able to come along on a journey, with just the words to steer them along. Listeners can close their eyes and experience a kind of travel.
With the use of a picture – an image allows a pre-existing point of contemplation. This in turn becomes a point of departure for the poem, and adds a requirement for the reader to revisit – the picture – the poem – back to the picture, and so on. Potentially, form of enhancement of the reading experience.
Going back to the example I referred to above, the good folk at ASF chose a poem I’d written to publish on their web site (among a number of other high quality responses), for which I am very grateful, but that was the second piece I had written for that particular image, and it set me to thinking about the nature of these contemplations. Where looking at an image today produces one piece of work. The same image tomorrow results in a completely different contemplation and poem.
I found that I wanted to give each poem an airing, rather than discard the non-selected piece. After all, what do you do with a piece of writing that is particularly derived from an image when a brother/sister piece is the chosen one? Discard it?
No discarding today. What I thought I’d do is put the two poems side by side beneath the picture, as an illustration of the varying possibilities that arise out of ongoing contemplation.
I’d be most interested to chat about or receive any thoughts you might like to share about this.
[table id=1 /]
A little peek inside the covers of the Small Town Kid e-book on Amazon. This poem – I can hardly wait to show you – is the preface piece for the collection.
Some very lovely things have been said about the Small Town Kid memoir, but they look a little lonely. Some more reviews posted to the places you visit for such things, or where you bought your copy would be a great boon for the book.
Don’t hold back. Tell us all what you think.
Happy Reading.
there is an elegance
in the sound
of a car
washing along the street
surfing a bow wave
a boat
of the bitumen
let’s sail
away
you can fix
on the star
that we’ll turn
to
I
will tiller
the steering wheel
take a chortle
of magpies
tuck the song
of my heart
into the pocket
of your shirt
on your sleeve
stop talking
I’ll
stop talking
turn the key
start the engine
back out
of the drive
up
over the swell
and driving down
car wash
street
~
