March Poetry Discussion - What to write about
Working with the third section of A Poet's Craft
This is an image that came up when I typed in “homesick.” See below…
As you know if you’re following this monthly post, a group of us are going through the best-ever book on crafting poetry, chapter by chapter. Feel free to join in the discussion even if you haven’t yet purchased the book (tome!) and even if you generally write fiction… you never know where time spent thinking about poetry might take you…
Here’s February’s post:
Chapter three of Annie Finch’s A Poet’s Craft, focuses on “what to write about.”
Subject matter. Content. How to come up with Something.
There are several dozen exercises in this chapter, from taking an observing walk, to eavesdropping (now there’s a Nancy Drew word I’d forgotten). From researching something (instead of write-about-what-you-know, it’s write-about-what-you-want-to-know), to homesickness—write about somewhere you miss, or somewhere you imagine missing. From remembering family expressions, to writing pieces of gratitude. Altogether, it’s a rich, thought-provoking list.
It’s not a long chapter to read through, but to work your way through all the ideas could take months.
For our purposes, I’d love to hear about your approach to coming up with something to write about when feeling uninspired. Don’t share any more of Finch’s ideas; I’d like to hear yours. And I’d love to hear what ideas you do try of hers—how it goes. Consider posting what you come up with… here, or email to me to post in the poetry workshop space.
Email: alison@alisonacheson.com. Or —
I work through the things that are causing me pain. I go towards the pain through writing instead of avoiding it.
I just closed my eyes and said to myself, write a sentence about what you see first. I opened my eyes and saw books stacked on a table. So I write: "If that stack of unread books falls then I'll gather them and restack them in some new randan order—and they'll go unread and beloved until they fall again."