The Act of Making

George Szirtes asks about the Act of Making. I interrogate myself about the need to shout back at the PC monitor, its blue self-sufficiency. Sometimes it's possible to believe you're the only person in the world.

When I write, which I do rarely these days, it is more of a listening than a writing. I don't know what sort of listening. Nothing as explicit as Name That Tune, but hoping to hear something. That sounds precious. It isn't really - the first poetry I heard was nursery rhymes and the shipping forecast, and prayers. Always troubled by what I didn't understand, I still find an edge of anxiety* in that listening.

There can be a cadence to it, rather as you can tell through a closed door without hearing the words, whether it's a sports report or Thought for the Day. (I don't want to write poems like either of those, by the way.)

First off, particularly if I'm asked to write something (rather than responding to a simple(!) urge to write), there may be a stage when I'm brainstorming, just jotting down odd lines and whatnot on scraps of paper, rewriting bits that interest me, shuffling them around, trying to see if they speak to each other. At this stage I have only the vaguest idea of what I might be listening out for. In fact the point is usually that I don't know - I'm hoping to be surprised, like the impatient child mixing up the components of the chemistry set behind the sofa, hoping for an explosion - but not anticipating that it will ruin the wallpaper. With luck, what I'm feeling at this point is a sense of recklessness, and ignorance: I can try anything, no-one's going to see it, no-one's going to judge my competence by this playing around. It's just words and shapes of words, lists of words, alternative words, arrows, squiggles, underlinings, verbal patterns, notes of echoes, influences.

But sometimes it feels forensic. There must be something here: it's a question of finding it, whatever it is. Often I give up at this stage, because it just seems like a heap of dry leaves. Or a load of responsibilities.

But if it starts to look promising, I may go to the computer and print off ten pages of draft stuff, because it's easier to cut up and shift around and keep track of. At this stage, whether it started as work or play, I'll feel more like a child on a wet Sunday with scissors, cardboard, glue and a nice empty kitchen table, but no clear plan. (Oh, and a mother, who has a very clear aesthetic... Who isn't going to like what I do. Too bad!)

But mostly, it's listening. Saying words over and over. If I'm lucky, I can get into a stride, into some sort of fluency - I agree with Helyer here - though I distrust what's easily won. If I can have clear space and time, and can work it through, there will be that self-forgefutlness.... Ice-skating, if I could do that, but for me - more like playing a fish. Yes, there's a fish there, but you can't see yet if it's a perch or a trout. You can eat a trout, if it's big enough. If you can land it.

No, that's a rubbish analogy. Fish aren't ours; we don't conjure them up. They are themselves. Here, they are only a metaphor. Words might allude to something believable, like a perch or a trout. It's more that the elements of preparation and luck can combine in a way that's similar to fishing. Chance favours the prepared mind. And standing out there in the drizzle, in oilskins, somewhere in Scotland, mind in neutral, can be pleasurable in itself, whether or not anything is landed.

Analogies with chemistry sets don't work. The poem is, ideally, something other. Often (in my case, anyway) it's not what I was hoping for. I might be looking and listening out for something deep and significant about that "eye-on-the-object-look" but end up with some drollerie about ironing. The language will have deflected me. And that's not something arbitrary, really, is it? In the end, it's my language, my own lack of seriousness, that sends me off into the undergrowth instead of up into the spare foothills.

Now please tell us, George, about your ploys for unblocking. In particular, do you have any simples against Fear?

*I really mean that. (I am so up for a cheap pun.)
Update
Perhaps I should stress that I'm talking here about the very start of writing, the point before I know what manner of thing I might be dealing with. The clearer it becomes, the more technical the approach. But at the very outset, it's difficult to know what is happening, or about to happen, and even less how to describe it.

a thing of shreds and patches

Rob MacKenzie has a post today about Poets in Velvet. A chick lit novelist describes the launch of a poetry anthology, quite unlike one I've ever been to.

Several of the contributors [are] mingling nervously with the guests. You can tell that they’re poets as they’re wearing mainly velvet clothing with lots of scarves and some of them have on jaunty hats. [p 183]

So what do poets really wear? In Martin Figura's splendid poem 'Poets' Retreat', the malevolent landlord boasts that his dog Cerberus 'can smell poet. It's the wet corduroy.' Martin himself can be found wearing a leather jacket from time to time, but never a scarf, never a hat. Never velvet.

moving on

The secondhand bookshop on Bridge Street is closing down. I'd popped in there in between chores, to find most shelves completely bare, and the floor covered with cardboard boxes. There were a few expensive old travel books left to pack. For a moment, I lingered over some Victorian travels in China, with engravings - something I didn't need, just covet...

All the poetry had vanished. Just wooden racks where it had been: startlingly clean and bright, simple pitch pine, never expecting to see the light of day.

I've bought so many books there over the years, and been tempted by many times that number. 30 years, they've been there, the proprietor told me, and now they were returning to their origins, going back on the road while they were still fit enough to enjoy it.

Oh, on the road, and enjoying it!

For a moment there, it sounded romantic. But think of it - the draughty church halls, the muddy tents, the packing and unpacking, the awful b&bs.

And meanwhile, the naked shelves, the cardboard boxes. The dither over how to pack the last few, the precious ones. What's it going to be? Another café, another outlet for chichi clothes.

Another piece of mental furniture shifted out with the trash by economic forces.