Writing Therapy

Lesson 1: What is a poem?

Getting started

Section Two: Barriers?

It is fine, by the way, if you are not able to write a ‘poem’ right now or hesitate to share it. There are a lot of reasons for this and it’s also no big deal. There are a lot of times when I and other poets don’t feel like writing and very often we don’t feel like sharing. Often it helps to start the juices flowing if someone starts, which is why I included my poem above and if anyone would like to offer there poem for discussion it might helps us all?

It is interesting to me that there are really two sets of barriers here: the barriers to writing poetry and the barriers to expressing feelings. Since this is not a clinical setting Jim Pennebaker’s comments on emotional expression should be sufficient unless someone wants to discuss this further. The barrier to writing poetry is one that we all share to some extent. For example, I spent ten of my writer’s block years due to a teacher giving me a model of what a poem should be and grading me down because I didn’t do it right. Others?

This is not to say that a poem shouldn’t have structure. It’s just that there are many more ways than one to skin the cat. Kowit and Strand have their thoughts on this as do most poets. I’d be interested here in discussing any other views any of you have picked up in your readings.

As an experimental poet, Mullen has utilized what can be called Oulipo methods in her work as do most ‘experimental’ poets. Does anyone care to share what they think her methods were? Oulipo refers to a group of French thinkers who were influential in philosophy and experimental poetry but it’s used to refer (at least by me) to any method which is an arbitrary way to write (like, “take the first word on the last five pages of your dictionary and make it into a ‘poem‘“).

If you are still having trouble getting started on your poem, it might be helpful to relax again and thinking of it as a form of play and that you are five years old again. There is no way that you could do it wrong! Despite what you’ve been told, there really is no such thing as ’writer’s block’ even though it can be painful and last a long time - it’s really just an inhibition about letting your hair down and playing, from my ten years’ experience of it.

If all else fails, I’d like to borrow an exercise that was actually developed for kids by Kenneth Koch, sit back and thing of some things you want and then write a list of them in the form:

I wish I had…..
I wish….
I wish…..

Let yourself go here. You can have anything you want. It’s only a poem. When you’re done you’ve got a poem there on paper which you can alter any way you want, including crumpling it up and throwing it in the trash. This, by the way, would be a ’poetic’ gesture, wouldn’t it?

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