It’s our final Creative Fridays of term! We bring you two fantastic poems by Peter Tse to see out the term in style…
This is a poem
Not a poem about writing poetry.
This is a poem
With its deliberately end-stopped lines.
Self-conscious, carefully selected
Enjambment. Don’t forget to vary
your lines,
varied line length
can
have
an
effect.
A very important effect.
Choose words that create iridescence,
that are sonically mellifluous.
Give simple words a chance too –
an exorbitant smorgasbord of esoteric words can awkward a line.
Give the beat a bit of a chance
to find itself some rhythm,
you don’t want to force it
finding beats to just fill pentameter.
Play with words to create metaphor,
like a child playing with bread dough
really, that’s what words are for –
to plant an image and make it grow.
Plants grow like people –
Personification –
It’s a form of metaphor
Or more generally, a trope.
There’s something to avoid,
exposition
It doesn’t add to the poem
It’s superfluous, it’s unnecessary
And slows lines down
Like a car running out of fuel.
Finally,
add the odd ambiguous line
challenge the reader’s preconceptions of the poem,
challenge their slowly forming conclusion of the poem
Cheese is fine.
Writer’s Bloc
The sky is blue
The clouds are white
The sea is blue
Unless it’s night
The sun is bright
It gives us light.
Mix those paints there –
On that blank canvas
Blue and white make light blue
They make the sky white
They make the clouds blue.
Blue and black make dark blue
They make the sea black
And the sea less black.
Set it on fire
To get a bright light.
I tried to paint the sea view
At day,
But the sky is blue
And the sea is blue.
Then I tried to paint the sea view
At night,
But the sky was black
So the sea was black.
There was a star in the night,
It could be seen in the sea.
Yellow is not bright enough
Nor white,
Nor yellow and white,
Nor yellow and white and orange,
With a sprinkle of cheap glitter.
Set it on fire
To get a bright light.
Peter Tse
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