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On Writing A New Poem

carolyncordon

New poems don’t happen every day, not for me, anyway. And since I started playing with a new platform, Medium.com, even fewer poems are being written by me …

But today, after something that happened, I wanted to write about it, and I wanted to make it a slightly funny little thing, and so I came up with a poem, and rather than writing the poem then at some stage deciding what to do with it, I wrote it directly onto my medium page.

This is the link to the poem, feel free to go there and have a read of it! https://kittycordo.medium.com/a-brand-new-poem-is-born-3e620c83e03

And after reading that poem, you can read more of what I’ve written over the five months since I joined Medium, and began posting articles there. I’ve been enjoying myself, and actually making money (tiny bits of it, anyway).

Making money, obviously isn’t why I write. If I wanted to make lots of money with my writing, there are other, far better ways to use writing as a money-making thing. I write what I want to write, what I feel like writing, not what someone tells me to write.

And today, what I felt like writing was a rhyming poem, about a mouse that may or may not really exist. A silly little poem, and one that might make me a silly little amount of money. If I earn more than two cents from this little rhyme, it will make me happy, because I wrote it without conscious thoughts of it being a great poem, just a poem I felt like writing, and it made me happy.

And being happy is a fine thing, isn’t it? Having mice in the house doesn’t make me happy, it makes me cross that these creatures invade my home. And having to trap the mice, because having them in the kitchen could lead to tummy upsets from the diseases the mice might leave behind, well that makes me sad as well.

Mice are such cute little things, with their whiskers, and their long skinny tails, and their big eyes, looking at me … But when I saw, or thought I saw, that mouse earlier today, I felt I had to write about it, and that is what I did.

That is a satisfying thing, to have had an idea, a mini writing project, and to complete it. And I might even make some money from it. That two cents I mentioned, may even become four cents. Or hope of hopes, could this poem go viral? (In good ways, not bad ones) I think sometimes about that time, when something I’ve written has ‘gone viral’, but I’ve never had anything look anything like doing that.

I suspect if I was writing about subjects other than my usual ones, something about marketing, or internet protocols, or such things, I’d have a better chance of my writing going viral, but they are not things I know a lot about, and I’m not interested in learning more about them, nor writing about them either.

So I’ll go on writing about creatures, and Nature, and other somewhat diverse things. And if I attract the interest of just one person, who likes what I’ve written, and leaves a comment, well that is enough. And if I can make two cents from a silly little poem, well that’s two cents I would never have had if I hadn’t posted that poem, on the Medium website here: https://kittycordo.medium.com/a-brand-new-poem-is-born-3e620c83e03

poetry

Creative Writing 4 – Using Poem of Another

carolyncordon

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.

poetry books

 

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 …