“Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these”
Emily Dickinson
My poetry class at St. Michaels College, Listowel, Co. Kerry, Ireland.
For three days we learned all about para-rhyme, half rhymes, feminine and masculine line endings, poetry forms including sestina, sonnets, free verse, and studied poets Seamus Heaney,Ezra Pound, T.E. Hulme, Emily Dickinson,Elizabeth Bishop, Paul Muldoon and many others.
Being surrounded by other poets and producing poems every day (eight original poems in 3 days) was very inspiring and scary and wonderful. Some of the poems I wrote will probably never see the light of day, but others will serve as good starting points.
One of the exercises we did was with art postcards. Today, a poetry exercise…if you keep every scrap of paper you’ve ever received (like I do) you might have some postcards in your collection if not they can be easily found online. Using a postcard immerse yourself in the picture and write a poem using all five senses. Experiment with para-rhyme and half rhymes, try a poetry form you’ve never written in, use language in a different way, this can be the start of a poem or your poem may take you into a short story or piece of prose.
Now get back to work!
Lovingly,
The Writing Nag