Week 5 to follow soon…

It’s a bit different from the two I’ve posted so far, but I am going for variety here so I would be very interested to hear what anyone thinks about it!

At first I was a little disappointed to find out that I was not a great originator of form. But what struck me most when looking at (looking at! Not just reading! Hooray!) Austin’s poems was how different they are from my own. I’ve noticed myself, and it has been pointed out to me by others, that despite the fact that I use a variety of different newspapers as source material, the poems I create do seem to have some sort of unified voice. So this seems to be quite a flexible technique.

As such, I thought I would respond to the clamour of hundreds of adoring fans desperate to know how I create such magnificent and exquisite works of art. So (drum roll) here it is: I doodle on newspapers with a marker. Kidding. I have tried a couple of different approaches. The first time I tried to do one of these I found an interesting phrase in the first paragraph and immediately blacked out everything else. I went through the rest of the article doing the same thing, and then did another very soon after. The first one wasn’t up to much, but the second one was pretty good. Good enough to make me think there was something in this, anyway.

But if I was going to write one of these a day for a year, I couldn’t really afford to have any misfires. So, instead of jumping straight in with the marker, I use a pencil to underline any parts of the article that jump out at me. There usual is something – a word that I like, or a phrase that I can see within the article. I have found that reading through the whole article first doesn’t help. I’m not sure why, but I think it’s probably that if I did it would be harder to see past the journalist’s writing. So I go through it, underlining bits I like. Sometimes there are big chunks where I don’t see anything and just pass over. I also tend to notice repetitions and recurring images which might be of use.

After this I tend to have the odd line or chunk here and there that need to be connected together. Sometimes this involves finding bits in between the lines I already have that will connect them. Sometimes it means deleting a lot of what I have underlined. Sometimes it’s easy and very fluid, sometimes like pulling teeth. Whatever the case, it is often at this point that I come up with some of the most interesting lines. Lars Von Trier once advised Andrea Arnold to ‘love your ropes’ and it has always seemed to me very true that restriction inspires creativity.

Then comes the marker. This is really an editing process. I have a complete poem by this stage, but is sometimes a little turgid or overwritten so there is a lot of cutting that goes on here! There is something incredibly satisfying about this part – drawing on the newspaper with black permenant marker.

The final stage is the cutting and sticking in my notebook. This is about form and structure. I have mentioned before that the blocks I arrange the lines into are, in my mind, stanzas. I think quite carefully about this bit. Sometimes these stanzas lift out of the newspaper fully formed, but often they are different bits stuck together. Although always in the original order. This is one of my self-imposed rules (or ropes, if you will) – that I cannot change the order in which words appear. However, by arranging these stanzas I give myself two kinds of negative space – the empty white of the page and the solid black of the marker. This is where the visual element comes into it as well. I consider quite carefully how many solid black lines to leave between words, and whether to connect sections together or separate them out.

The time all this takes can vary quite considerably. I think the shortest is probably about an hour, but the difficult ones can drag out over days. Sometimes I have to put one aside for a while and come at it afresh to finish it off.

So, there it is. I hope that was of some interest! I would, of course be happy to answer any questions anyone might have. And encourage you to write some of your own! I would love to be able to post or link to any experiments.

And was not impressed with the name ‘Concrete Void’.

Now, I am aware that it does not necessarily make a lot of sense at first reading, and when you do understand it, it is rather pretentious – I admitted as much in only my second post. But I have to admit, I actually do really like it. I think it’s cool. It comes from Howl. And it has, like, layers of meaning. My colleague pointed out that it is not very accessible, and may put off potential readers who are not already into poetry in a big way. I responded that I didn’t think any such potential readers existed.

What do you guys think? Have I picked a ridiculous, unhelpful, elitist and rather silly name? Or is it an interesting, effective and relevant title under which to post my not-necessarily-very-accessible-anyway poetry?

I would love to hear your thoughts!

As always, any thought, comments and constructive criticism would be very much appreciated as always.

Hopefully I’ll get a bit more blogging done over the weekend – I’m keen to put a poem from week 3 up as soon as possible, as well as some thoughts on my participation in the this collection slam and some comments on my process which a few people seem to be somewhat curious about.

So hopefully I’ll see you back here soon!

I’m posting this first for three reasons:

1. It’s my favouruite so far

2. It is the poem I read in the final of the this collection slam which put me into second place from third, above the witty, sardonic and brilliant Chris Lindores. This was a feat that can mostly be explained by the fact that Chris (bizzarely) didn’t expect to get to the final and so wasn’t prepared, but also suggests other people like it – Andrew Philip very kindly described it as one of ‘the stand-out poems of the evening.’

3. It’s the first one I scanned in

I’ll be trying to get another two up over the next few days, and will write a little more about the project when I do. In the meantime, I would love to hear your thoughts!

Referencing Ginsberg in the name of my blog and Morgan in the tagline is ambitious to say the least, but they’re both geniuses and I am not and I wanted to make a good first impression. I just want you to like me! Writerly cliché no.1 – desperate for approval. Check!

Also, it does kind of explain what I am trying to do. I am a concrete poet. I think. I was watching ‘Howl’ the other day and the phrase ‘concrete void’ just leapt out and grabbed me, so I took it as a gift. And I’m appallingly bad at naming things so having managed to think of one name I was not inclined to attempt to think of another.

And the tagline? Glad you asked, voice-in-my-head. Edwin Morgan is not only one of my favourite writers but the first concrete poet I ever encountered at the tender age of 16. I fell in love with him, instantly. And although it took quite a while to filter through, the idea that a poem was not just words or rhythm but an object never left me. I love looking at poetry. Not just reading it but looking at it, as an object in space. I may even, on occasion, have inappropriately stroked a particularly appealing page. But only when it is printed on very high quality paper! And it was always consensual, I swear. I think that is why I prefer the term ‘concrete’ to ‘visual’. The former speaks of a tactile thing, not just something that you look at.

The first concrete poem I ever wrote didn’t start off concrete. But I finished it, and it wasn’t finished. I didn’t want to add any words to it, but the way it was on the page wasn’t the way it was in my head. So I moved some of the words around, and it bloomed. A short poem of only 11 lines, it went from being crammed in the upper left corner and suddenly took up an entire page, words carved out of empty space. That was what was missing – not words, but space. The words I had just needed room to breathe.

After that, I was addicted. Whenever I wrote a poem I couldn’t help myself from fiddling with the layout afterwards, and I was never happier than when a poem fit perfectly into one page.

This does, however, present me with a bit of a problem. Publishing my work on a blog will change it, as I no longer have pages to play with. I am planning to try and write some stuff specifically for the internet, that similarly couldn’t be printed on a page. But I haven’t had a good enough idea yet. Hey, it’s my first day as a blogger, okay? 

But for now what I primarily hope to use this blog for is a recent found poetry project I have undertaken. For 11 days now, I have purchased a different newspaper every day and found a current affairs article in it that particularly interested me. Then, using a permanent marker, I black out most of the words. I then cut the paper up and stick sections in blocks into a notebook, the idea being that these blocks are the equivalent of stanzas. Hopefully, by doing this, I have written a poem! I intend to keep doing one of these a day, every day, for 365 days.

However, I am way too lazy to update this every day, so I am going to try to put up one a week. I will also blog occasionally about the process.

Hopefully people will be interested enough to check back regularly! Again, any and all constructive feedback will be very welcome.

So this is my first post. I feel like I should give some sort of statement of intent, or something. Which is a bit of a challenge, because I’m not really sure what I’m doing here.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I am here to put out some of my poetry. Which is where the uncertainty comes into it, because that kind of implies that someone, somewhere mighty actually want to read it. I’ve been writing all my life, and have always been of the opinion that I’m a bit shit at it and should probably stop. But it’s compulsive, and I don’t really want to. Kind of like eating crisps.

But why, all of a sudden, am I creating a blog? Good question, voice-in-my-head, although I don’t appreciate the sceptical tone. Well, the blame for that lands squarely at the feet of one Claire Askew; accomplished poet, blogger extraordinaire and, for her sins, my girlfriend. Her blog is called OneNightStanzas, incidentally, and you should really go and read some of her stuff instead of hanging around here.

Anyway – I am a massive book geek, so for me dating a poet was kind of like what dating a musician is for normal people. In other words, fucking cool. Especially when she started writing poetry about me. I hadn’t really written a poem in about two or three years, having decided that writing bad prose and drama was somehow better than writing bad verse. But then the odd line and image started floating around my head. And it was such an overwhelmingly wonderful feeling to read what she had written about me, that I felt compelled to return the favour. Even if it was really bad, I thought she might still get a buzz out of it. Bizarrely, she actually liked it, and told me to write more. I protested, told her she was incapable of being objective, but kept quietly writing and showing her what I had written, and she kept encouraging me. And I wanted, have always wanted, so desperately to be a writer that I increasingly indulged in the fantasy I had been indulging in for about a decade, that I might actually have the potential to be good.

But I didn’t really believe that anyone except my loving and patient partner would be in any way interested in my poetry until two nights ago. So what happened two nights ago? Shit question, voice-in-my-head, you were there, you patronising bastard. Claire, among many other things, is one of the coordinators of a local (I’m in Edinburgh, by the way) community arts project called this collection. Their latest event was an experimental poetry slam, organised by Claire, which she starting panicking about a month ago. One of the things that she was panicking about was getting enough performers, so, dutiful boyfriend that I am, I volunteered myself. By the time the line-up was finalised to include the intimidatingly good Young Dawkins, 2011 Scottish Slam Poetry Champion and two thirds of Edinburgh Performance Poetry legends, The Chemical Poets, I was committed, and couldn’t pull out without having a domestic. And I kind of felt it was time to stop being such an abject, moany coward and actually find out if people liked my stuff. Turns out they kind of did. Somehow, I managed to come 2nd out of 16, and afterwards felt so giddy that I couldn’t sleep.

And now, here I am. Because I’m going to keep writing, and if I’m going to be a writer then I’m going to need some readers. Hopefully I might even get some constructive feedback that will help me get better.

That’s you.

Ta for that, I’ll totally shout you a pint next time we’re out.