Instructions for Picnicking Out of Doors in Winter
Making Collages, Writing Poetry and Winter Picnics
Sadly we didn’t make it to the sun this week as our holiday was cancelled due to illness. Perhaps you can sense the longing for Spain in these paper collages I completed one dismal, cold, afternoon.
It’s not been the most productive week but along with collaging, I’ve been thinking about ways into poetry…
I'm not always sure about prose poems; even about what they are, about what defines them, or if they are indeed poetry, but this week I read a prose poem, On Our Backs Looking Up, that I really liked - by which I mean it worked for me. In it, I read the reflection of a long relationship, the catalogue of a whole life and the uncertainty of the future, which is something I feel increasingly now.
On Our Backs Looking Up
Jan-Henry Gray
the large cockroach dead from poison, looking up at the ceiling, packing lightly, imagining the late train home, thank you note, touching the pale of your forearm with my fingers, feeling beautiful, breathing together, a banana spotting black, last night's unfinished wine in a green bottle, the face of the light fixture, checking your skin in the mirror, checking your bank account, our clothes stuffed into one piece of luggage, in hotel beds, two windows facing south, ghosts of last night's feast, the smell of rot from the soil, on your floor, there is protocol and survival, torn foil, an entire body slackening, exhaling, do you know the way back, the licked spoon on the counter...
you can read the whole poem here, (its well worth it) with thanks to Poetry Daily
I was especially interested in what the poet himself had to say about writing the poem:
For the past four years, I’ve been unsure how to finish (and sometimes start) a poem. I played with various generative strategies until I landed on one that felt right for me and my brain. I invented these “table poems,” a loose list-like form resulting in dense prose blocks heavily inspired by the all-at-once collisions of collage. This is the first to be published from those “table poems."
Finding our way into writing is not always easy, but I can definitely imagine trying a 'table poem,' like this. I've been playing with similar ideas, but with smaller blocks. I've been reading a lot about quilts, which has led me to wonder about poems as quilts - about lines/verses as patches that can be arranged in different ways. In exploring this I've cut out squares of paper and written lines or verses on each and then played with moving them around, and finally when I have some kind of order, finding the thread to stitch them together. This appeals to me a lot, partly because it is very much like the 'collision of collage,' of which Jan-Henry Gray speaks, and collage is, as you can see, a medium I like to work in. It also makes me look at the words in a different light, often more imaginatively and with a valuable element of surprise.
Another 'generative strategy,' that works well for me is the Instruction, or the How To poem. This is a format, that however we interpret it, can provide a gateway into a poem. And like any poem worth its salt, an instruction poem will always be about more than its instructions.
Other ways I find into poems, are through writing off the top of my head, without thinking until a beginning emerges somewhere among the words. Better still, is writing towards a subject, which entails not referring to your subject, and writing everything but, for as long as possible.
To do this take two pages in your notebook, write the subject at the bottom of the second page. Now begin writing at the top of the first. I guess you could call this the Emily Dickinson method of tell it slant
Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind
How do you find your way into a poem, or a piece of prose - do let me know in the comments below?
In these dark and stormy January days, I leave you with blue-sky winter poem, which is about more than picnics, which is about friendship and women growing older (apologies to those who've seen it before). I wrote it after such an outdoor picnic, one January.
Instructions for Picnicking Outdoors in Winter
First find the garden that catches the winter sun
shelter of a high yew hedge and
solid friends-of-the-garden furniture.
Call up a robin.
Wear your woman’s coat, frost hair, snow
gloves, rug.
Place mandarins in a bowl on the table
spirals of spinach and feta, chocolate biscuits and eclairs.
Gather to remember
what we sometimes forget,
speak of our forgetfulness,
of Ovid and French conversation.
Read forgotten poems.
Gather in the garden
in winter
knowing how beautiful you are.
Thanks for reading - Avril x
The extended prose poem has always eluded me. I take the same approach as prose, writing and tighten- writing and tighten, producing a few verses from what starts as a few pages of A4. But how to write Under Milkwood or The Ballad of Reading Gaol, remains a mystery to me. How do I say the few sides of A4 are not rubbish to rachet up short and tight, and are poetic works in themselves hmm?