Transcripts
1. Prologue : Over the years of teaching
poetry workshops, I've noticed that there
are certain issues that arise again and again at
the beginning of a course. While as with any art form, there aren't really
any mistakes as such, as long as you know what you're doing and why
you're doing it, there are telltale signs that something was
written by a beginner, and these are things
that can stand between you and your reader. These five things that
we're going to look at today are things that I did myself when I was
starting writing poetry. My name is Nev Pryor. I am a poet and an author from cork on the
South Coast of Ireland. I have spent many years writing, teaching, and studying
the craft of writing. This class is for you if
you are a beginner poet, and it's also for
you if you've been writing for a while and
you just want to check in to see if you might
be doing something that you can eliminate from your poetry in order to
really let it shine. So if you want to know what
these five things are to avoid in poetry in order to bring your writing
automatically and drastically up the
level, please join me.
2. Centred Text: For this class, I've
written a poem that contains all five of things
to avoid when writing poetry. One by one, we'll
go through them and undo them to see how
the poem improves. For the sake of simplicity, I've written this poem without any punctuation because we're focusing on other things today. Here's my poem. I'll just
read it out for you. That time of day I love
to swim doth twice appear once when on
the rise the sun is, and again, when it's de
climb to bed it doth make. Into silken mirror
the sea surface turns when the majestic sun
begins or ceases to burn, and on celestial high, the moon doth watch over
me in the twilit sky. Then my soul sings when
saline waters I enter, and to move my arms and legs, I venture with my heart as full to the brim as
the spring tide and so wide is my smile when thus I swim and so my days I
like to end or begin. One thing that beginning
poets very often do, and this is something
that I definitely did for a long time myself is to
center the text on the page. The reason I did
this was because I thought it made it
look like a poem. And if I'm being
perfectly honest, I probably didn't have
that much confidence in the content of
what I was writing, but the quality of the writing. So I figured that if
I centered the text, no one would notice and if it looked like a poem,
it would be a poem. What actually happens
when you center the text is that it makes it difficult for you to judge the line length and the
rhythm of the poem. It just throws you off. There are, of course,
cases where it makes sense to center
the poem, say, if you're writing
concrete poetry where the shape of the poem has something to do
with the content, but that's rarely the case. Let's left align this poem and see how it looks
when we've done that. It looks a lot better on
the page, doesn't it? Well, I think so anyway. We now have a much better idea of
what we're dealing with. We can see it much more
clearly on the page. We can judge the
length of the lines, and also it's just a lot
neater and being neat on the page is being
considerate to your reader and being considerate to your reader is
always a good thing.
3. Capitalised Letters: There is no need these
days to capitalize the first letter of
every line in a poem. It's old fashioned really. You can capitalize the start of sentences as you
would in prose, but otherwise, just leave
them as small letters. Now I know there are
word processing programs that decide, you're
writing a poem, they automatically capitalize the first
letter for you and then a tussle might
ensue like it has between me and word
processing programs in the past. If you can figure out how to
disable that function, do. Otherwise, just
use small letters unless it's the
start of a sentence. Let's undo our capital letters at the start of these lines
and see how this poem looks. I think that looks a lot more inviting to the
reader a lot less formal, old fashioned, and pleasant
on the eye for the reader.
4. Forced Rhyme: A First of all, there is no need to rhyme. Secondly, there's absolutely
nothing wrong with rhyming. Whether to rhyme a poem or
not is a personal choice, and it will quite often be dictated by the poem itself as to whether it wants
to rhyme or not. When done effectively, rhyming can be very rewarding for both
you and the reader. My point is this that if you force rhyme for
the sake of rhyming, it's going to sound
affected to the reader. I've highlighted the
forced rhyme in this poem, just to take a
closer look at it. Into silk and mirror, the sea surface
turns, that's one. Then when sailing waters I enter and to move arms and legs, I ventures another and then we've got spring
tide ring but so wide and swim rhymed I
like to end or begin. Let's see what's going
on with this rhyme, what we've done, and
how we can undo it. In this first one
into silken mirror, the sea surface turns. It's the syntax is off. I've put the word order in such a way to put the word
turns at the end of the line, but it's really forcing the word order out
of a natural flow. Let's rewrite that as the surface of the sea
turns into a silken mirror. That's much more natural
flow of words for me. Then the second one, then my soul sings when
saline waters I enter, syntax is off there as well, and to move arms and
legs, I venture. The syntax is off there as well, but also the word venture. I've obviously just chosen that word to make it rhyme with enter and it's not the best
word choice, to be honest. Let's undo that bit of forced
rhyme and see what happens. Then my soul sings when I enter saline waters and begin
to move my arms and legs. That's sounding a lot more
comprehendb basically. It's more relatable
to the reader. The language is
much more natural. In the third one, with my heart as full to the
brim as the sim tide and so wide is my
smile when thus I swim and so my days I
like to end or begin. What happened here is I've made the lines extra short
just to make them rhyme. I want to tide and
wide to rhyme, so I cut these lines really short for no
reason other than that. And that last line as well. So my days I like
to end or begin. That just doesn't
make logical sense. It would be so my days
I like to begin or end. It's reversing the order. Let's undo that little chunk
there and see what happens. With my heart as
full to the brim as the spring tide and my smile so wide when I swim like this, that this is how I like
to begin or end my days. So you'll see in this last one, I've extended the
length of the line by instead of chopping it
arbitrarily in the middle. I've just put those two things together as the spring tide and my smile so wide are
on the one line now. But as you can see, you don't
actually lose the rhyme. You've still got swim and
brim and tide and wide. Only now those rhymes are embedded in the line instead
of being at the line ending, but they're still there and in the way of the natural
flow of sentences. There's also a really nice
bit of internal rhyme with the word smile that rhymes with tide and wide in
a way the eye sound. This is a lot more
natural than shoving the rhymes in the reader's face. You can still have
rhyme in there. It doesn't have to be
at the end of the line.
5. Highfalutin Language : So now we've tweaked
those lines. The poem is looking
a bit better again, but I think there
are still some lines in here that are a bit awkward. For example, doth twice appear once when on the
rise the sun is, and again, when it's declined to bed,
doth make on celestial high, the moon doth watch
over me in Tilt sky. Let's take a closer look at
these and see what we can do to improve them. So The first lines, the dot twice appear once the sun on the rise the sun is and again
when it's the dot make. That's just needlessly
wordy and the syntax is off and the syntax isn't
even off for any good reason, not even for the sake of Brime. Let's change that. Let's make it appears twice when the sun is rising and again
when it is setting. That's much more straightforward and much more natural to me. So what about these lines? On Celestial high, the moon doth watch over me
in the Twilt sky. The syntax is
actually okay here. It's the words themselves, and on Celestial high, the moon doth watch
over me in Twilt Sky. This way of writing or
speaking is not natural to me. It's not my language,
it's not my vocabulary. I've been using language
that isn't mine, that's antiquated and yes, Shakespeare wrote using
language like this and so did lots of other people who
wrote hundreds of years ago because that was the contemporary
language of their time. What we need to do as poets
is write in our own language. I think the reason that a lot of beginning poets write in this
language that is unnatural and old fashioned is for the same reason that
they center the text. But in this case, instead of
making it look like a poem, they think it makes
it sound like a poem, which is what I thought when
I used to write like this and in order to get in touch with your own vocabulary
and your own language, I recommend if you
haven't looked at it already to take my
class in freewriting, because I see free
writing as fundamental in accessing that language
that is natural to you. Now, of course, there are
cases in which it makes sense to use high folutnal
fashion language. If, for example, you're
writing in the persona of someone who
lived 100 years ago or two or three or
four, 600 years ago. But if that's not
the case, then yeah, just use your own words
and that makes it much more accessible
for the reader as well. Okay. What this poem demands now is a quite drastic rewrite using language that's
natural to me. While I'm at it, I'm also
going to make it less general and more specific, more about one experience, one specific experience
because that time of day I love to swim, it's quite lofty and
old fashioned as well, so we'll narrow it
down and make it more individual and specific. Here's the first
half of my redraft. Last night I swam at sunset. The water was a mirror
of spilled black ink in the shadows under silhouettes
of tree studded hills. Where the last light landed, its surface turned orangy pink, transforming as the moon rose into mercury pooling
and moving as I moved, seeming at once
solid and liquid. This draft is a lot more
natural to me and it was much easier to read
it out because the language flowed
more naturally. The first one felt more like a tongue twister when
I was trying to read it out because everything
was so unnatural, the syntax and word choice. In this version, there is no more self consciousness
about the language itself and there are no more efforts to make
it sound like a poem. That's the first part
of my drastic redraft. For the second part,
I want to look at one more thing that can really bring your
poetry up a level. It
6. Big Abstracts : In this poem, I've used
the words soul and heart. But what exactly do I mean by my soul sings or my heart
is full to the brim. These words hard soul and other big abstracts like
that have been used so often and can have so many
different meanings that they become vague and have little
impact on the reader. We need to find ways
to word things in order to better get across what it is we
mean to our reader. Now, I'm not saying don't
ever use abstracts. I'm just saying be aware of
those big ones that could be better expressed in other words that might be more
relatable to your reader. I deal with this
in more detail in my class three tiny exercises
for big improvements. So if you want to work on finding ways to better
express abstracts, then take a look at that class. So for now, I'm going to take the words soul
and heart out of this poem and see what else
we can do there that might be specific, more relatable. Here's what I've come
up with instead. That old word quicksilver
on my mind as a feeling both fresh and remembered from
childhood expanded in me, pushing out stale bubbles
of daytime stresses, and the temperatures of my body and this patch of
Atlantic became one.
7. Epilogue : Of course, there are
always exceptions to these guidelines or conventions
that I've told you about. But it's always good to
know what to avoid and why so that should you
decide to go against that, you're doing so consciously and for whatever good reasons
you have for doing that. I think we've come
a really long way from our first draft to
the final draft today. Now let's summarize what
we looked at today. You five things to
avoid in poetry are centering the text, capitalizing the first
letter of each line, forcing rhyme, using hyfaluten
or antiquated language, and using vague abstracts. Thank you so much for
taking this class. It's been an honor and a
pleasure teaching it as always. If you have time and you
feel inclined to do so, please leave a review because your feedback helps me know
what works in my classes. But for now, happy writing.
Niamh Prior, Author & Poet, PhD
