Word Saucery

I was inspired to write this blog post whilst sitting at my kitchen table, working on a poem and presided over by an enormous pumpkin.

I purchased it at the local supermarket, under persuasion from B, aged 12. Actually, I lie. I needed little persuasion. I love any excuse for making something.

However, days later, here it sits, uncut, defiantly plump and glowing against the black countertop of our kitchen.

Who will give in first, I wonder? Will I take a knife and make the incision? (Think of the waste, otherwise! Think of the cakes and pies!) Or will the pumpkin quietly deconstruct itself over the days to come?

So I sit looking at this pumpkin and the pumpkin looks at me. We survey one another.

And it occurs to me that this pumpkin is like a poem.

‘What does a pumpkin have in common with a poem?’ you may well be asking.

Well, it’s something about the space. Something about the way that its shape is as much about the space around it as what it manages to contain. That’s what reminds me of a poem on the page.

Yes, this pumpkin resonates. It is radiantly, stubbornly its own poem.

Carving into it would be risky, would require a certain care. You know, not to squish the delicate flesh of it with my enthusiasm, my carefully thought-out constructs, cuts and counter-cuts. Scooping out just enough to allow it to glow when lit from the inside. Not too much that it becomes brittle, collapses in on itself.

Can I wring anything more from this metaphor? Well, only that poems, it seems, are everywhere.

This morning, I have nothing in particular to write about. I have been enjoying a wonderful cycle of creativity recently, where everything, everything, feels as if it is potential food for a poem and I wake up writing lines in my head. And then today, nothing. Or rather, I began a poem in my head and it’s just awful written down.

I knew I was forcing it. It’s a sign that I need to recharge, refuel.

On my Online Programme right now, we’re experimenting with free-writing, writing anyway, writing when you have absolutely nothing that you really want to say, just writing and keeping writing.

And it’s the opposite of forcing things. It’s about letting go into the writing, keeping things loose, easy.

Because sometimes the pressure of wanting to have something meaningful to say is what stops us in our tracks.

In this month’s online Horizon Review magazine by Salt Publishing, who are publishing some of my favourite work in contemporary poetry right now, such as Katy Evans-Bush, I read an interview with Pascale Petit (another favourite) who says that she writes in large notebooks across the double page so that she doesn’t feel cramped. (I am paraphrasing here. This is one of the details that stayed with me from the interview.)

And I think that describes it nicely. Don’t allow yourself to get cramped. Breathe. Expand.

No clients today so I’m going to do some cleaning and tidying (maybe) and get out into the sumptuous autumn colours too. Nothing like getting my body moving to allow the words to begin writing themselves.

It’s National Poetry Day here in the UK and if anyone out there has ever been tempted to bemoan the fact that people aren’t interested in poety anymore, here is evidence in abundance that poetry and poems are still very much alive and kicking in the public psyche.

It’s not just that we reach for a poem in times of need - weddings, funerals and other rituals. It also seems that lots of us are writing poetry. Lots and lots of it.

Today my Twittering and Facebooking has been filled with news of poetic events all over the country. People are linking to their favourite poems or nominating their poetry heroes.

There’s a lot of enthusiasm for poetry out there.

Last night, we had the announcement of the biggest poetry prize in Britain, the Forward Prize. Within seconds, the Tweets from the prize-giving were flowing. Poetry, it seems, is news.

I love the fact that people all over the country are composing Twitter haikus, quoting half-remembered verses of Walter de la Mare, talking about their favourite T S Eliot and debating whether Bob Dylan’s lyrics can really be called poems.

It seems that everyone knows what a poem is. We recognise it. It recognises us. There’s just something about a poem that speaks us, or speaks for us.

Don Paterson, winner of last night’s Forward, once called a poem ‘a little machine for remembering itself.’

Yes, it’s that. And it’s also so much more than that.

Happy National Poetry Day!