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Creative Writing 1: Poetry

Written by Meg Peacocke

About the author

Meg Peacocke has been a Tutor for the OCA for a number of years. She is also
a mentor for Lancaster University’s course Crossing Borders, which is designed
for African students writing in English. She has three collections of poems to
her name (publishing as M R Peacocke), all from Peterloo Poets:

Marginal Land, 1988 (now out of print)

Selves, 1995
Speaking of the Dead, 2003, reprinted 2004.

Her work has appeared in many anthologies. She has won a number of major
poetry prizes, and gives readings of her own work.

She wishes to thank Jean Harrison for her thoughtful advice, OCA poetry
tutors for their support, and poetry students Mary Davis, Eileen Hogarth,
Pippa Little and Ann Miller for their contributions.
Contents

Introduction
Aspects of the course
What are the aims of the course?
What does the course offer?
What is expected of the student?
Is supplementary work required?
You and your tutor
What can the student expect to gain?
On completing the course
1: Getting started
1a: The tools of the trade
Material aids
Other resources
1b: Seeing the world anew
Exercise 1
Exercise 2
Exercise 3
Exercise 4
Assignment 1

2: Reading and developing your ear

2a: To read or not to read?
2b: Developing your ear
Sound
Rhythm
Five-finger exercises
Exercise 5: rhythms (a)
Exercise 6: rhythms (b)
Exercise 7: sound (a)
Exercise 8: sound (b)
Assignment 2
3: Your poems: form and content
3a: Finding the form
Traditional form
3b: Gathering and organising material
What will you write about?
Exercise 9
Exercise 10
Assignment 3

4: Language and construction: drafting

4a: The language of poetry
Simile and metaphor
4b: Drafting. Where does the line end? and other questions
Lineation
Punctuation
Words that possess energy
Assignment 4

5: Redrafting and editing

Your final submission
Assignment 5

Appendix 1: Glossary
Appendix 2: Reference books
Dictionaries and others

Appendix 3: The Learning Journal

Learning Journal contents

Appendix 4: Formal assessment

Introduction
Outcomes of this course
Selection of work for the Assessment Folio
The Reflective Account
The assessment process
Five-finger exercises
Here are a few exercises to play with, concentrating on sound and rhythm.
Remember, as you explore them, that the aim at this point is not to produce
poetry but to make yourself more deeply aware of the aural qualities of
words.

The idea is to cultivate the use of your ear as an effective element in your
writing. Don’t stop yourself from speaking words aloud or tapping them out.

Exercise 5: rhythms (a)

Here are four place names:

Crewe Cannock Chase Budleigh Salterton Devizes

Try switching their order about until you have found rhythms that are
satisfactory to your ear. There will be more than one way of doing it. Are you
wanting, at some point, to pop in an and? Go ahead. When you have a pattern
that you like, which may or may not have a regular metre, see if you can
replicate it with other placenames that you know. You might like to construct
a whole verse of names. (This exercise can become rather addictive if you like
rhythm.) Four more names, if you want to play with them:
Kendal Charnock Richard Bury St. Edmunds Otterton

Exercise 6: rhythms (b)

English sentences fall very easily into iambic pentameters:

I’m sitting down to drink a cup of tea.
The silly fool forgot to lock his car.

Ten syllables, but with five regular stresses. Write five or six more sentences –
not attempting to be poetical! – that fall into the same pattern.
Here are two more lines of ten syllables that avoid that stress pattern
altogether, and differ from each other as well:
When do you expect the end of the world?
Quick crosswords are constructed of dull clues.
Neither has a regular pattern of stresses. The first line has four stresses among
its ten syllables, and the second, five. Try writing a few ten-syllable lines with
differently-positioned stresses and numbers of stresses, avoiding altogether
that familiar pattern of iambic pentameters. (It can be quite difficult.)

Modern poets frequently use syllabic forms – patterns of syllables rather than
of stresses – not necessarily in lines of ten syllables, of course. The syllabic
pattern doesn’t –or shouldn’t, I think – draw attention to itself; but if you spy
it in a poem that pleases you, there can be pleasure in seeing how the piece
has been made, rather like appreciating the cut of well-made clothes.

Exercise 7: sound (a)

Try saying these words to yourself and considering their qualities of sound:
smooth livid slide dawdle hullaballoo squalor discreet hump
desecration lucid scratch

You will hear that the sound of a word may connect closely with its meaning.
You may also find that two words may have the same stress-value but are
quite different in pitch – livid and squalor, for instance. Collect together some
words that seem to you to have an expressive quality in their sound. They
might also connect in meaning: rock boulder pebble grit.

Exercise 8: sound (b)

What I am about to mention deserves a section to itself, but you will find
yourself exploring it as you explore reading; that is, the connection between
words and breath. Consider these extraordinary lines from Ulysses –Tennyson
again, a master of sound-painting:
The lights begin to twinkle on the rocks.
The long day wanes. The slow moon climbs. The deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends!
Three iambic pentameters, that so-familiar pattern, but what the poet does
with them! Read them aloud, and see what your breath is doing. The first line
is like a whisper; the second is drawn out almost unbearably, and rides over
the end of the line with a soft pause while your lips change from the p of deep
to the m of moans; and at last the decisiveness of Come, my friends! as the
ancient Ulysses commits himself to journeying again. It’s literally
breathtaking.

This is a sample fromCreative Writing 1: Poetry. The full course contains 10 Exercises
and 5 tutor-assessed Assignments.