[Philip Smith]

Some time ago Janet Kenny had a thread on Dry Spells.

One piece of advice is to keep writing even if it's no good. I have followed that advice religiously for 20 years!

However another way to go is to write about not being able to write itself. Does anyone else do this?

Wind and Water (pun intended)

Considering this was a dry spell
Shingle and shell were just beach
And the great green heaving
Mass of ocean
Just a sea and out of reach

And lacking the gene for religion
Nothing of praise would come
Plus Debussy did it
Well and fully
What more to add to the sum?

Siroccos and Zephyrs escaped me
And their loss was a singular blow
The Mistral and the
Westron Wynd
Were no longer mine to know

In the midst of this desiccant season
Like an etiolated reporter
Lost for the words
I turned around
To only wind and water

Westron wynd, when wilt thou blow
The smalle rain down can rain?
Christ yf my pen were in my hand
And I coulde write again…

[Frank Hubeny]

Dry Spell

My wife was glad the dry spell came.
There was so much to do.
"There's money to be made, my dear.
It's time to get off your fat rear
And help around here, too."

[John Whitworth]

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.

[Mark Allinson]

One piece of advice is to keep writing even if it's no good.

Even writing stuff on General Talk discussion forums can keep the word-mills turning when nothing else is happening. And I do think you have to keep the wheels well-oiled for when they are needed. The brain-word-finger link needs to be maintained.

I used to get upset at "dry spells", but not any more. I really do feel that they are somehow part of the process, and the poems will come when they are ready, and not a moment before.

[Philip Smith]

For me there are four aspects to this

a) The subject matter dries up
b) A losing faith in the point of it
c) A feeling of "nothing to add to what has already been said" even a if a subject occurs
d) The word-hoard is empty

Right now I'm being pressured to write some stuff and a fifth element has crept into the equation

e) Sheer unadulterated stage fright

Frank - I sympathise. My wife (although an English teacher) refuses to recognise the act of writing and refers to it only disparagingly as "being on that bloody computer again".

John - nice sonnet. Yes and dusting off some old bits and pieces can work.

Mark - I feel reassured...and you're right - since my original post a goodun popped out unannounced (only about ten more to go and I can relax).

P

[Mark Allinson]

Philip, yes, it's true for me, at least, that any poem worth its salt comes in its own good time.

And I had to wait 56 years for my first sonnet!

I do find that "verse" can be produced almost at will, but a living, breathing poem (unless you happen to be Willy S. or someone) takes its own good time. And more often than not, I find they sneak up from the periphery of one’s vision, and there they are, before you know it.

I don’t have a hard theory to explain this process, and “the Muse” may well be a metaphor for brain-chemistry events. All I do know is that with all the peace and quiet and the best will in the world, and even with a great theme or idea, the poem has it’s own plans.

Sometimes an idea I have drafted on years before will suddenly reveal what it really needs, and there’s the poem. I might have stared at it for months, but I couldn’t see it till that moment came.

The very fact that “dry periods” so often crop up in discussions on this forum shows that poetry is not within our conscious control.


And Rilke is right to say that for a poet, patience “is everything.”


“There is no measuring with time, no year matters, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confident in the storms of spring without the fear that after them may come no summer. It does come. But it comes only to the patient, who are there as though eternity lay before them . . . I learn daily, learn it with pain to which I am grateful: patience is everything!” - Rilke.


[This message has been edited by Mark Allinson (edited May 18, 2008).]

[Chris Hanson]

Dry spells. Always an interesting discussion. Here are some of the "methods of getting through it" I've heard about:
1. hammer away and write your way through the block;
2. go into hibernation;
3. do lots of reading, even of familiar, favourite material;
4. (my occasional option)try different styles, even things you'd never done before. If I can't come up with anything, I'll go for a blank sheet and work through some images, themes, a couplet or a quatrain...
5. revise old drafts--something might come to you. Even the most technical revision or the most seemingly-mundane amendment is all part of the hard slog (keeping the wheels oiled, and all that).

Above all, you don't give up, even if you're pissed off with the whole thing.
And if I miss a deadline due to inactivity, guess what? I don't care. There'll be more deadlines just over the horizon.

Just my two-bobs' worth.

[Thomas Newton]

I have a different take on “Dry Spells.”

It used to be that one good sonnet was enough for a young courtier in England to establish a reputation for cleverness. Why I have written more than one sonnet I will never know. How many times do I have to prove myself?

Thomas Newton
Conservative Poet

[David Anthony]

Originally posted by Thomas Newton2:
I have a different take on “Dry Spells.”

It used to be that one good sonnet was enough for a young courtier in England to establish a reputation for cleverness. Why I have written more than one sonnet I will never know. How many times do I have to prove myself?

Thomas Newton
Conservative Poet

--Were they all equally good?

[Anne Bryant-Hamon]

Things to help bring you out of a dry spell:

1) Visiting the beach

2) Walking through the woods/hiking/camping

3) Vacation/Holiday to a place you've never been

4) Reading more - from the classics, to the scriptures, or pretty much anything you enjoy reading. Don't just sit and stare at a blank page and try to squeeze blood from turnips.

Top things that make writing difficult for me personally:

1) A bout of deep (clinical depression)

2) Grief

3) Physical ailments and illness


Poetry is like sex... sometimes you're just not in the mood.



[This message has been edited by Anne Bryant-Hamon (edited May 06, 2008).]