A215 Poetry - Coffee Cravings

Having done the section on fiction (and written a 2,200 word short story, or rather four of them, two of which were way too long) the next part of the course is on Poetry. For six weeks or so I’ll be trying to write some poetry. I was finding poetry rather baffling, I’ve never had a problem writing prose, it just sort of rolls off smoothly. The first chapter in the Big Red Book about it, Chapter 12, wasn’t really that helpful for me, I didn’t think it was offering anything new over what we’ve already covered at the beginning of the course. Mainly it was a series of writing prompts and exercises on inciting creativity. There was nothing about what made this stream of text poetry as opposed to prose.

However, Chapter 13 is quite different, and while reading it I’ve done first drafts of two poems, one of which is my own attempt at exercise 13.5 which I’ll post below. The bit that clicked for me was the discussion of poetry as spoken rather than written. How there needed to be rhythm, pace and timing in reading it. The discussion on alliteration, rhyme and how the form of poetry changed with the increase in literacy sort of made it make sense for me. Doesn’t mean I’m now a crack poet, but it made me happy enough to give it a go. Just as well really, because I need to manage 40 lines of good quality poetry for TMA03.