Rules for Poetry

Some notes I wrote on how I want to write

A chàirdean,

Another month already gone? Ach, there’s not enough time to write everything that I want to write and that is my most persistent heartbreak.

I’ve not been taught writing or literature since secondary school – which is funny, as I’ve taught both, and have a PhD in Creative Writing. I’ve always had a sense of making it up as I go along. While I’ve read a lot of books and studied all sorts of subjects that interest me, I still often stumble across topics that I’d be expected to know about and don’t. The other night, a pal mentioned “New Formalism” and I asked “What’s that?” (I’ve learned to ask without embarrassment.) She explained, and I said “Oh, aye, I’m probably a bit aligned with that”. And now I have a new rabbit hole to go down and think about.

At best, this tendency to autodidacticism supports my curiosity, encourages my willingness to experiment and do weird things, and gives me an ability to rediscover areas of history and thought that have fallen out of the canon. At worst, it leaves my work scattered and ungrounded, and me retreading well-trodden paths without recognising the footprints.

To that end, I wanted to write down some rules for myself, notes on how I write, or want to write, with which I can ground myself and to which I can return when I’ve a need. I thought they might have some use for you too. Let me know if they do.

Josie x

Rules for Poetry

I don’t know what I’m doing. I should keep not knowing what I’m doing. If I start to know what I’m doing, I should try harder.

Poetic form, like all play, means following arbitrary rules in order to see what happens. Play remakes the world. Every rule is essential until it’s not.

Every thing is full of life, especially the things we call unliving. Stones, phones and hormones – all lit up with life. Poetry is the celebration of life in all things.

If I put down a word because I’m supposed to, if I put down a word to strike a certain pose, if I put down a word in order to feel superior, something has gone wrong. These moves – freeze, fawn and fight, respectively – are not poetry. Better to fly and come back when it’s safer.

Restraint is for suckers.

More on this: the aesthetics of restraint in 20th and 21st century Anglophone poetry arise in response to a paticular constellation of political and economic conditions – the mass production of luxury, the spectacularisation of war, the academicisation of literature, the rabid proliferation of advertising – which rendered aesthetic excess politically suspect and aesthetic moderation the mark of moral worth. All of these conditions can and must change – so too poetry.

My job is too communicate. If I’m making it hard to understand me then there ought to be a fucking good reason. There are many fucking good reasons.

There is no objective “hard to understand”: there is only legibility for and against particular audiences. I can, to some extent, choose my audience. Then, when a different audience chooses me, I learn something golden.

Density of reference is not wisdom. Evasion is not truth. Difficulty is not beauty.

Poetry should clarify – but sometimes it must obscure in order to do so, because nothing is less clear than received language.

Every poem must contradict itself. Whenever a thought is too settled, unsettle it.

I write to learn how I feel. If I set out already knowing how I feel, no I don’t.

I do not write to learn what I think, but to make what I think less comfortable.

Naivety is better than cleverness.

Enthusiasm is better than irony.

All humour must come from passionate fury. When a joke soothes, cut it, but when a thought hurts, the funnier it is the better.

My mind loves patterns. Why deny it its pleasures?

The taxi driver complaining that poems don’t rhyme any more does actually know something important, and I should listen carefully to her in order to find out what it is.

There are things older and deeper than rhyme.

It is brave to put myself in a poem.

Why are poetry readings boring? Why does everyone pretend that they’re not? The answers to these questions hold a lifetime of poetry.

My concentration and creativity are the most precious things I have – a gift I have been given. My phone, my self-doubt, the massed forces of marketing, wage slavery, diversity initiatives, trying to keep as clean a house as my grandmother, the pink wound of my inbox, back pain, floss tape, kegels, revolutionary urgency, the clickety- clack of death’s neat feet on the pine-effect floor, the attentuated scream of news, the weighted blanket of obligation, the watering can, the stiffness of winter in fingers that deserve comfort, the blue glow of the portal – all these are parasites on the great good gift of the pen. Carefully place the tweezers each side of the creature’s bloated head and pull, takkan tent to remove any trace of its legs.

Early mornings are my best time. Writing is the thing I care most about. Therefore, write first each morning. The equation is irrefutable. No excuse can break it, even when taken.

The idea of a poem is not a poem. At best, the idea of a poem is a little push to sit down and find out what a poem is.

When I hear music, I follow it.

If in doubt, breathe in, then out.

In the beginning was the sound.

If still in doubt, go for a walk. Not with headphones on, you roaster.

There is no justification for what I do. If there were, it wouldn’t be worth doing.

Every library is a palace of wonders. So is every tree. Both are free. What comes free will usually benefit me more than what I can buy. What is mended teaches more than what is replaced. Convenience is always, always a lie. When someone promises to save you time, it is because they want that time for themselves. Yes, this is still about poetry.

Buying more books than I can read is also consumerism. Consumerism is anti-poetry. A few books read well are better than lots of books read badly.

The only poetry I can write when I don’t have time to think is poetry about not having time to think. That is also a worthy subject.

Why aren’t I comfortable with silence? How is a poem supposed to come when I keep chasing it away?

Always start on paper.

Transition helps a poem be. Thus, for each new draft, use a different medium. The ink scrawl can be transcribed, the blinking cursor can be printed, the typescript can be read aloud, the audio note can be written down. Every medium teaches a poem something new about itself.

Folk music survives for a reason.

If a poem is hard to memorise, it’ll never be memorable.

An exercise is not a poem, but it may make a path to a poem.

Life is a product of copying errors. Thus poetry.

Every poem must be against the police.

Do no mistake what I do for a living with what I do to live. The former should be in service to the latter, not the other way round.

Dig where I stand.

What brings me joy is always good.

What I’m Doing

The programme for Fife Queer Zine Fest on Saturday 21st February is online. It’ll be a celebration of rural and small town Scottish queer culture, with a wee market, a reading room, talks and workshops. I’d love you to come. Get in touch if a lift would help.

On 25th February at 7pm I’ll be reading at the British Museum with Daljit Nagra, Mary Jean Chan, Caroline Bergvall and others. It’ll be the first chance to hear some of my work in progress translating Catullus 63 in response to my favourite artefact.

On March 4th at 5pm I’ll be at the University of Aberdeen, talking about my book chapter The Caledonian Trans Reveal: Scottish Gender Novels in the Literature of Devolution, with responses from Mae Diansangu, Domenico di Rosa (University of Glasgow), and Moth McGowan (University of Aberdeen). I’ve been talking about this chapter (on Van McDermid, Irvine Welsh, Iain Banks, Christopher Whyte, Luke Sutherland and Ali Smith) for actual years, and this will be its first public outing. I’m excited. Eventbrite coming shortly.

What I’ve Read

Chris Kohler’s Phantom Limb is as good as reported. It’s a relief to read something ambitious that’s extremely Scottish and extremely about Scotland. I wonder how it reads outwith Scotland.

Peter Green’s Poems of Catullus is the sort of failure that’s better than any success. I feel closer to Catullus with it, rather than closer to myself.

Han Kang’s The Vegetarian took me apart. I’d like to learn how to terrify readers like that.