What I Learned from Week One

... of the Finding Your Way Home course.

We are asked to journal about this.

One thing I have learned is that having a special spot for writing, as we are invited to find, doesn't work for me. Writing happens wherever I am. Often that is at the computer. Often it is somewhere else with iPad — anywhere else, from bedroom to dining-room to park to chiropractor's waiting room.

I have also learned that I am definitely now one who writes on to a screen instead of with paper and pen. Who woulda thought it, a few years ago? It's just a preference, but a surprising one. I can't bring myself to go back to a paper notebook, even for the sake of this course, even as an exercise. Not that we have been asked to; it's not a requirement. But it seems kinda assumed, probably unconsciously. I'm sure I am still in the minority among 'creative' writers.

And I have not so much learned as confirmed that working on poetry takes precedence over pretty much anything else, including 'mindful writing'. Sometimes — often — I write my 'small stones' in verse, but I still give precedence to other poems which are not doing double duty as exercises in mindfulness.

Though, I suppose, all poems require a degree of mindfulness....

My Writing Process – Blog Tour

Step one: Acknowledge the person and site that involved you in the blog tour.

That's the wonderful — and busy! — Canadian poet, Pearl Pirie, whom I met online years ago when we both responded to a month of poetry challenges at John Hewett’s site, then known as Writer’s Resource Centre and now an extremely useful archive. Pearl's own blog tour astounded me just now, when I read about all of her activities! (And that's just the literary ones.)

Step two: Answer the 4 questions below about your writing process:

1) What am I working on? 

There are two collaborative poetry collections. The main one is a year-long collaboration with three other poets, Aussies Jennie Fraine and Helen Patrice, and Brit Michele Brenton. It's a renshi, a Japanese form consisting of a series of linked poems. As we write them, we're posting them on a blog, "Poems by the Followers", and our intention is to turn them into a book. I am already enthralled by the way this is developing. Some of the last lines can be quite a challenge for the next person to take as a starting point!

The other is also a collaboration with Helen and Jennie. In 2013 we all did a series of moon poems spanning a lunar month. We recently decided to choose the best to combine in a book: Three Cycles of the Moon. It has been compiled. Currently we're looking at ways to self-publish it as a e-book, and are seeking the right cover illustration.

I'm also working on a memoir about the experience of widowhood (my husband died in September 2012). That too is taking the form of a blog at present: The Widowhood Chronicles. Again, the plan is to turn it into a book, perhaps covering the first two years, which people say is the usual period of readjustment. 

I have poems on this subject as well, naturally, and have created a chapbook covering the first six months, which I am getting ready to submit to a publisher.

And I’m putting together a chapbook of poems I wrote (some in collaboration with others) for a somonka challenge issued by Robert Lee Brewer of Poetic Asides. A somonka is a pair of tanka, one responding to the other. One by American Bruce Niedt and me was runner-up in the competition and has been published in a recent issue of Writer’s Digest Magazine.

I have a memoir about the spiritual/magickal aspects of my life, again in blog form so far, but I find it hideously confronting to put that intimately personal stuff out there. (I’ll tell you about my sex life, my financial situation, my politics, but….) So I am discontinuing that blog and will be writing the stuff somewhat more privately until I think it’s ready to become a book.

2) How does my work differ from others of its genre? 

Only by being mine, in my voice and style. There's no huge, dramatic difference otherwise. I haven't reinvented the chapbook or the memoir.  And I write all kinds of poetry; I love to explore. 

The renshi project is unashamedly based on a similar book by four Hawaiian women poets, No Choice but to Follow. (It's available in Kindle and paperback. Helen picked up a copy of the paperback on a trip to Hawaii and asked for collaborators for a similar project. I read the book while visiting her, and now own the Kindle edition.) Our imitation is meant as flattery, so our collection is likely to resemble more than it differs from theirs — except in some details, e.g. in our case three of us are Australians and one British, and we are not sponsored by a literary magazine as they were.

3) Why do I write what I do? 

Poetry's a vocation, the thing I can't not do. It began when I was a small child. I hope and trust it won't stop until I die. It sustains me. It is my comfort in sorrow and my companion in joy. Although I am on a low income, it makes me feel rich. 

I began the widowhood memoir simply as a blog, for emotional release, and in the hope it might be helpful to others. People found it beautiful and begged me to publish.

People have been asking for years that I write a memoir about my esoteric experiences. I can see that it might have value to seekers, and hope to slant it that way. Though I find it so difficult in practice, I’m not averse to the idea in principle. I think there must be lots of past lifetimes of needing to keep that knowledge secret, so perhaps I need to clear some blocks.

4) How does your writing process work? 

Poetry starts with a line or two in my head. That might turn out to be at the beginning or end, or somewhere in the middle. It might even end up being discarded — but it's important to write it down asap, or else I might lose the whole iceberg of which it's the tip. 

In recent years I have sometimes also written poems to prompts. They can trigger ideas and memories that might otherwise have lain dormant all my life.

I used to write by hand in notebooks I could carry with me everywhere. Nowadays I compose straight onto computer, and love to take my trusty iPad mini with me for writing as well as reading. (I uploaded the free Pages app.) I still carry a tiny notebook and a pen too, “just in case”. (In case of what? I haven’t yet specified that to myself.)

When I was the mother of young children (long ago), if I couldn't get straight to pen and paper when inspiration struck, I’d memorise the line or lines in my head and hold them there until I could. These days I trust my unconscious more, and allow things to percolate unattended if necessary. They’re there when I arrive at the page. Or the idea is, and it finds its words. Mind you, I try not to leave it too long before arriving at the page, or they can fade away and be lost.

A friend recently said she thought  my poems just flowed out spontaneously, without a lot of revision. I wasn't sure whether to be flattered or insulted. I do a great deal of tweaking and polishing at the point of creation. I do also come back to them after time has elapsed, and re-examine them.  I have been known to scrap things and do complete rewrites in other forms, styles, whatever. But it’s supposed to be good if one’s art appears effortless, so I decided to take my friend’s remark as a compliment — even while acquainting her with the facts! I thought she seemed a mite disappointed that her theory was wrong.

I do a lot of revising and editing of the prose, too.  

In prose, it is usually the idea that comes first and then I find the words — except for prose poetry, which I write occasionally; and unless I am journalling, which is a dump straight on to the page (and may or may not need a lot of cleaning up afterwards if I decide to make it public).

Trained by being a mum, and then by Natalie Goldberg, who suggested writing in cafés, I don’t need perfect peace and quiet in order to write. This is very useful!

Trained by poetry communities which issue prompts, and perhaps also by decades of experience, I can now toss off a creditable first draft quite quickly. Participation in these groups requires that the drafts go up on my blog straight away. I do come back later — sometimes a lot later — to revise and if necessary make changes, but most people see the first draft and probably don’t revisit. This is perhaps a good reason for submitting “finished” poems to literary magazines and anthologies (usually online nowadays) and for creating chapbooks.

Step 3: Who’s Next?  

I was asked to choose three other bloggers to whom to pass on the torch. At first I couldn’t find anyone who didn’t feel they were too busy. Then two people agreed: American poet and social media (content and design) professional Delaina Miller, and Aussie poet/muso/digital artist Phillip Barker (aka Soma).

If anyone else would like to jump in, please do! Email me for details.


(Cross-posted to my website)

'River of Stones' — the Process

I’m participating in this month’s ‘a river of stones’ over at my Stones for the River blog. I did it in January too, with great joy, and intermittently between then and now. This time around, I’m noticing more about the process, probably because my husband has joined in this time and his approach is different from mine. Well for one thing, I’m a poet and choose to write my small stones in verse; he’s a story-teller, whether in fiction or memoir, and naturally seeks to make stories out of his small stones. But it’s more than that.

I love his writing, so what I’m about to say isn’t a criticism of that — but I notice he has real trouble simply paying attention to the world around him. He produces lovely pieces that don’t end up on his blog because they’re not actually small stones. They are diary entries, records of events and the way he feels about them. He talks, for instance, of running into a couple of old friends in town yesterday. After reading what he wrote, I know that this event happened and who the people were, what he felt about the exchange, and a little of what was said between them. I know nothing of the surroundings, or what the people looked like, or how their voices sounded — no description. The ‘small stones’ idea is all about getting outside oneself and noticing the world around us. I think it’s OK to bring oneself in if necessary, but from the outside, dispassionately observed. He manages it, but it’s often a struggle.

Back in January Kaspalita, who co-founded the river of stones, posted a piece on just this. It seems many people have the same difficulty. I don’t seem to have quite as much trouble with it, and I put that down to a few years of attempting haiku, tanka and other short forms which train one to pay attention to the world. However I worry that I‘m ‘doing it wrong’ in a different way. Although there isn’t any obligatory length, I keep thinking mine are too long this time. I was convinced that I wrote much shorter ones in January, until I went back and had a look. No, they’re about the same. 

I notice, too, that both my husband and I keep falling into the significance trap. What do I mean by that? I’ve been in a long-term writers’ support group (often by email) with Jennie Fraine and Leah Kaminsky for — good heavens! — 20 years. We are devoted to what we call ‘the anti-significance factor’. One of the earliest things we identified was that trying for deep significance is death to poetry. Or, as my friend Philip Martin used to remark, people don’t like to be buttonholed by a poem and told what to think and feel. Personally, if I try to write something deep and meaningful, it paralyses me, whereas if I just play with words or forms I produce poems — sometimes even deep and meaningful ones. It’s essential to remember that art is play. I think, with a small stone, the thing itself is what matters; no need to weight it down with any extra meaning. But human beings are very good at trying to add extra significance to everything, even the simplest things.

Difficult or not, I think the task is worthwhile, not only for the writing it can produce but even more so to have us engage with the world around us. It even led to me watering my geraniums, which badly needed it, because I stopped to take a good look at them. 

Why Blog My Poetry?

My blog on MySpace had had 30957 views last time I looked. Those people have given me ‘kudos’ for my writing only 1386 times, and I have received only 2130 comments. Some have been from the same people returning over and over again. Even so, I think that’s a lot more people than would find and like my poetry in any in-print Australian literary magazine.

My MySpace blog includes prose and has been going for four years. On Blogger I have three blogs just for poetry: a haiku page, a page of ‘verse portraits’ and a page for poetry in general. The haiku page was started in January 2007 and has received 736 visitors. The verse portraits began in June 2008 and have had 752 visitors. I started The Passionate Crone, where I post all my other poetry, in May 2006 and it has had 6973 visitors to date (already 30 this month, so far). Again, some are the same people returning many times; some visitors don’t stay to read for very long; and many more visit than actually comment.

These figures are ridiculously small compared to the traffic some other kinds of blogs have, with thousands of hits a day. For poetry, however, it’s a high readership, and it comes from all over the world. I have readers in India, Africa, Argentina, China (to name just a few) and all over Europe, as well as thick concentrations in Australia, New Zealand, all the north American countries, and Britain. This exceeds my wildest pre-internet dreams.

But is it only that I can’t get published in reputable journals? Admittedly I don’t try very often, but when I do, I don’t have any trouble being accepted. (I do, however, prefer online journal publication too, these days.) In previous decades I was widely published in prestigious places; also the people who now comment favourably on my work include poets whose own work I love and admire. Yes, every poetaster can now get a blog and a host of enthusiastic readers to go with it; lovers of real poetry can still discriminate.

There are blogging poets with readerships and reputations far higher than mine. Some of them publish mostly in blogs nowadays; others use their blogs as adjuncts to their print publications. Some of us put our first drafts on our blogs and submit our revised work for publication in journals. Some go straight from blogs to chapbooks, and it seems that enough of their blog readers want to have the work in book form to make that worthwhile.

Somewhere in the mix is performance, for decades a good way of getting your work known and building up a following. It still is, and often the two things go together. Many of the blogging poets I know are also performers. I seldom do that any more, though I was a high-profile performer in the past. I moved to a small town where poetry performances are a few hours’ drive away in various directions. Although from time to time people have tried to get things going locally, so far they haven’t lasted. And I’m older now, and don’t much like driving for hours through the night for any reason. I rely more and more on the blogs.

However, you can surely do both, and submit to journals and publish books as well, and they will all enhance each other. Even I still do a little bit of performing, submit to journals occasionally, and am gradually creating some chapbooks. Blogging doesn’t have to be a substitute for other kinds of exposure, but along with performance it has become one of the first and easiest places to get your work ‘out there’.

It’s good from a reader’s point of view, too. I love being able to read the latest pieces by my favourite poets with just a couple of clicks.