Heh! I agree with you about “the natural poet” who spouts fluently while wandering on lonely moors. He doesn’t exist, no matter how much the general population would like to think he does. I feel as if I’m constantly fighting a battle about this, but with the image of “the natural writer”. The natural writer sits in her ivory tower, jotting down her inspirations in a blank notebook while tealights flicker around her and a harp plays. When her musings are finished – and she is so brilliant she doesn’t need to edit them – Publishing Superman swoops in from the sky and “discovers” her. Bingo. She is now a billionaire.

When I make the mistake of telling people I’ve had 20,000 rejections for my writing, they give me pitying looks and mumble: “Well, maybe it isn’t meant to be? Have you considered it might be time to give up? How about self-publishing? You know, sometimes in our lives we have to separate dreams from reality.” And I’m thinking: “Every night I’m at the coalface writing. That is my reality. The only tower I have near me is a tower of unironed clothes. I have gone beyond waiting for Publishing Superman to sweep me off my feet. What matters now is practice and for my writing to be good.”

Fiddling around with words and sentences and plot parts and minute aspects of character – that is largely what I seem to be doing these days. But I honestly believe that if somebody doesn’t have the experience of writing, they think that if you play about with words and are constantly revising then you’re rubbish. I’ve read so many interviews with published authors where they say: “Oh, I hardly needed to change a word of the original manuscript, I just sent it off to an agent and I was taken up straightaway,” and I’m thinking: “No, you didn’t. No, you weren’t.” The myth of the natural writer is perpetuated by the writers themselves.

Which I suppose was what I was doing when I said I wasn’t a natural poet. I haven’t written poetry since I was doing my undergraduate degree 11 years ago so I am far from being practiced. I’m embarrassed to show anyone anything remotely poetry-ish that I’ve written because the lack of practice glares through. Then again, the prophecy poem I’ve written is meant to be rough and spontaneous because of the context. Knowing me I will revise it 10,000 times anyway before I put it in the story.

Helen took over Reed’s blog with long musings about writing. I will put a sock in it. By the way Tenuous and Precarious is my favourite Stevie Smith poem:

http://plagiarist.com/poetry/1293/

Good luck with your desert poem, Archie.

*Speechlessly contemplates throwing her arms around Litlove’s neck*

Helen – it did? It worked? October? I feel so inordinately pleased with that compliment its a wonder the top of my head hasn’t come unscrewed.

I know quite a few people have a tin ear for poetry, but I do wonder if anyone who can write well is ever really not a poet, or simply not a practiced poet, or if poetry and prose are actually very different. I tend to think of them as very similar, the one perhaps the brandy to the other’s wine. Or whisky to the other’s ale (Hmm, can you tell I haven’t touched strong drink for days?). It is possible to have a deep affinity for poetry, and nevertheless you’ll need to work and work at it. I suppose an affinity merely makes you WANT to. I do not now and never will believe in natural poetic effusions flowing from the wild and untamed soul of artless nature. Not even in Shakespeare’s case (‘bad revolting stars’, anyone?). At this point whoever it is I have pinned in a corner far far away from the crisps and peanuts and booze usually wildly mentions Mozart and I point out, hotly, that he had been practising away at his piano since he was TWO, goddamnit, he had six years of five-hours-a-day under his belt when he started astonishing the crownéd heads of Europe, and am gently led away by merciful relatives who set me to peeling potatoes in penance.

Anyway.

Please scold me if you wish, but I think natural poets are created, not born. Though it is perfectly possible that a person could find all that effort and endless fiddling about with mere fragments deeply discouraging and le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle

Oh yes, Stevie Smith. I don’t think I know her work nearly as well as it deserves, but have always had a soft spot for The Jungle Husband, which starts off as a rather jolly little poem (‘hittapotamous’ indeed) and over subsequent rereading morphs into a heart-breakingly stiff-upper-lip suicide note. Just brilliant.

Intonation is so important in English, I agree. You just need to look at the difference in the stressed syllable between “record” noun and “record” verb. I tried to tell my students the importance of this when I was teaching English.

I’ve recently been trying to write a prophecy that one of my characters speaks in my book, and it turned out as a poem with each line having 11 syllables. It did descend into prose but that was sort of the effect I wanted to create. I’m still deciding whether or not to use it because I don’t feel I’m a natural poet.

I wonder if you like Stevie Smith?