No, Not Plagiarism!
Fear not, I’m not advising anyone to use poems of other poets, and saying they are your poems. This is plagiarism and is rightly against the law. What I am referring to is to use the poems of other poets are inspirations, and ‘templates’ perhaps.
I’ve done this workshop in my favorite venue in Gawler, with gratifying results in the past.
To do this workshop, I advise you either raid your own stash of poetry books, or visit the library and borrow some of theirs.
Workshop details
- Other people’s poems can be an unending supply of ideas for the writing of your own poem. Some people think that if you read the poetry of others, you will somehow copy that work, and it will be stealing, instead of being creative.
- I certainly don’t agree with that idea, I’ve often been inspired by the poems of others, and have come up with something perhaps on the same or a similar subject, but it quite a different form. There are millions of words in the English language, and it is fine to take words from the languages of others and use them too, English is famous for that!
- I want everyone to find one poetry collections from the ones you are using, to find one tome that seems to ‘speak to you’. This means, one that is on a topic you like, or written in a way you find interesting, or even exciting. Once you have the book you want to use, find a poem or several poems, and write them out on your paper.
- This poem will be your inspiration for writing a brand new poem for yourself today.
- Take a poem, and change nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, and make it a new poem in that way.
- Or you can take the poem title and use that as the inspiration for a completely new poem.
- Another way to use the other person’s work might be to take a particularly striking image or idea in their poem, and write your own poem using that as the title of, and inspiration for your own new poem.
- These and other ideas can be fascinating ways into poetry, and I hope you are all as excited about what might happen, as I am!
My Poetic Response to this Workshop
I chose a poem from the book “Tadpoles in the Torrens”, which is a collection of poems written for children, that have much interest too, for adults. My chosen poem is ‘Cat Nap’ by well known Adelaide poet, Jules Leigh Koch.
For this exercise, I have change the animal to a dog, and followed the format of Jules’ poem, but as it applies to a dog instead of a cat.
“Dog Doze by Carolyn Cordon
Our pet dog
as loud
as a thunderstorm
Makes her home
in our house
and in our garden
To imagine prey
large as dragons
small as mice”
I feel I have captured the idea of a dog, in a similar way the other poet captured a cat, and that is what I was certainly trying to do. I am also thinking about writing a haiku poem, similar to the famous poem by well known Japanese Haiku poet Basho, which was written about a frog jumping into a pond.
My poem, if I manage to complete it to my satisfaction, will be about the well known birds, galahs, Australian birds who live around where I live. I love to see them as they fly all around, squawking loudly!
Carolyn
Carolyn Cordon, President Adelaide Plains Poets, writer, poet, dreamer, cloud watcher …
Carolyn Cordon - Creative 