tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28238816.post8347910564657094607..comments2024-02-24T11:28:02.310+00:00Comments on Poetry in Progress: Marion McCreadyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04657757253873577465noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28238816.post-62569702502137014502014-11-11T09:53:55.952+00:002014-11-11T09:53:55.952+00:00Hi Jim and Alan! Thanks for that, lots of good ide...Hi Jim and Alan! Thanks for that, lots of good ideas there. I have read Elizabeth Smart's book - a few years back, I'll dig it out and have another look. I can't see myself ever attempting a traditional novel - even the idea of it bores me - don't have it in me or the interest to. <br />I won't ever stop writing my poems!! <br /><br />I'm thinking maybe it's time to tackle the 'long poem'. I've done a few longish sequence poems and maybe this is something I could develop further. Marion McCreadyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04657757253873577465noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28238816.post-51571026328942974842014-11-08T08:00:14.726+00:002014-11-08T08:00:14.726+00:00Hi Marion, it may be that your way of working on p...Hi Marion, it may be that your way of working on poems doesn't work once time constraints are lifted. The way I wrote when I had all day to write was very different to the way I write when I am working. With no real time constraints I found that the poems were not, and could not, be forced. I simply adopted the method of always carrying with me a pad and pen. I became annoying to people for stopping and noting a line, or an incident, or something I saw or thought down in the pad where ever I was. I then had an allotted time (first thing in the morning) when I would examine yesterdays happenings jotted down and see (like a fisherman spilling his catch) if there were any good things that wanted to become poems. Very occasionally there was a whole poem waiting there. Sometimes there was a good line or two, Often there was nothing. But this weay of working would result in at least a working poem a day. As you know, once I have a good number of these I will start to go through them, keeping and discarding, editing and re-editing, etc.. until there are hopefully some that another person might enjoy.<br /><br />I think it would be a sad loss if you stopped writing your poems. <br /><br />Very Best,<br /><br />AlanAlan John Stubbshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07032806790275919690noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28238816.post-15236161276274721252014-11-07T08:58:53.311+00:002014-11-07T08:58:53.311+00:00As you know I wrote nothing but poetry for twenty ...As you know I wrote nothing but poetry for twenty years before I felt the need to do anything else. It wasn’t that I was fed up with poetry—far from it—but I was dry as a bone; hadn’t written a thing for three years. And, as I’ve said before, one day I sat down to write a something, an anything, just to feel words flowing from me again. Next thing I knew I was knee deep (feels like that ought to be hyphenated but I guess I need to be careful these days) in a novel and wondering where the hell all these words were coming from. To this day I still think of myself as primarily a poet and the rest is stuff I do when the poems won’t play nice. I’m not a storyteller though. That’s never interested me. I’m a problem solver. And some problems are too big for a poem or even a bank of poems like my Drowning Man series or the Sweet William poems. But if there’s not the need to write, the compulsion then I simply don’t write. If you’re looking for a big project I suggest you look to the big questions in your life, the things that make you who you are, be it your island roots, your faith, motherhood, the loss of your mother (or both of them at the same time) or the thing you have about blood. When it comes to my own novels here’s the thing though: I’ve usually discovered what I’m writing about in the process of the writing. I start by feeling my way. My last novella <i>In the Beginning was the Word</i> started off simply about a guy writing a story—I was trying to dramatize the writing process—but I found myself digging deeper into nature of the relationship between my subconscious (who gets a voice in much the same way as Truth was given a voice in <i>Living with the Truth</i> although not a body) and my conscious mind and the realisation, the inevitable realisation that he’s the one actually in charge. So it was the exploration of this dichotomy that took over. Maybe you should have a look at what other poets have done. Larkin, of course, wrote a couple of novels but he’s a far better poet than he ever was a novelist. What about blurring the lines? Have you read <i>By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept</i> by Elizabeth Smart? I never managed to finish it but I was a lot younger then. A novel takes me a long time to write so it needs to be something I can live with and not get tired of. It’s not like a poem that’s done in a few minutes, hours or days.Jim Murdochhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12786388638146471193noreply@blogger.com