This seems a worthwhile thing to talk about f only because it takes in just about anybody who writes. There are times when you feel like it and there are times when you don't. Of course, if you are a journalist, and I don't use the word in any dismissve sense, then you have deadlines to meet. Like Dr Johnson you will have the printer hammering at the door. And Johnson was one of those people who couldn't write UNLESS the printer was hammering at the door. Well, you will say, but a poet doesn't have deadlines. He does, I do, if I am entering a competition. They have entry dates. AndI enter competitions all the time. There are those general poetry competitions where just about the only constraint is that your poem must not exceed some maximum lineage, usually forty. Anyone who studies my works will see what a lot of poems are exactly that long. Of course there is a drawback. There are entry fees. Who would shell out enytry fees if they never won? But that is defeatist. If you can write meterd, rhymed verse, then why shouldn't you win. In fact I win enough to show a profit, though not enough to put sufficient bread in the mouthsd of my family. And not all compatitions have entry fees. There are those run by English magazines with a literary flavour (The Spectator, The Oldie etc) where you just send the poem along and hope to win twenty five pounds and (if you are top poem this week) a bottle of scotch, or, on one mavellous occasion, a crate of beer. So go for it.
Another thing you can do is to look over all those failed or abandoned bits of poems you have. That could be your entite unpublished oeuvre because, as OPaul Valery said a poem is never finished, only abandoned. This is a good reason for never throwing away even the most unpromising starts. You never know.
Another thing you can do is to find some very outre form and see if you can construct something to fit it. Itried something called Luc-bat once. Vietnamese I think. Anyway, the poem was no more tan an exercise. Until it took off and I found myself enjoying the linguistic and inventive possibilities. I've since published the oem twice and it's earned its keep, a number of Australian dollars, a number of Englisj pounds, not many but some.
Busy, busy, busy, you see. Write something every day. And there are alewats these Eratosphere boards. Someone else's poem may spark something off. Here's a poem which is no more than an assemblage of parts, a boltng together of stuff from the little boxes of the mind. Does it work? Well, sometimes I think it does.
A Sonnet Is
A sonnet is a moment’s monument,
A silent Elevation of the Host
As insubstantial as the Holy Ghost;:
You’d catch it but you don’t know where it went.
You can’t read all the letters you’ve been sent
And find it easier to destroy the post.
A situation very prevalent
Where literary angsts are uppermost.
Your word-hoard’s overdrawn: it’s all been spent,
Suggesting nemesis is imminent,
The roads are closed; You’ll never reach the coast.
A pack of wolves is prowling round the tent.
It’s style, not plot, that keeps a guy engrossed,
Like caviar on lightly buttered toast.
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