NZATE 2009

1. NZATE 2009 Poetry Workshop Terry Locke

2. Aims • To engage in some writing processes related to poetry • To reinforce understanding of some key poetry-related terms through engagement in such processes

3. Some theory: Sense-making as aesthetic • When we make sense of some aspect of our experience we give it some kind of form or shape; • The creative or imaginative process might be thought of as the movement from formlessness to formliness (an ugly word, I'll admit); • Our imaginations work with materials or representational resources in these acts of sense-making. Representational resources can be verbal, visual, aural, multimodal, tactile, and so on); • The form that emerges in any act of sense-making is susceptible to evaluation. Some forms are more pleasing or shapely than others, though human beings will differ in their views on what makes a form seemly or shapely or pleasing or just plain beautiful.

4. Some theory: Sense-making as aesthetic (2) • One kind of criteria of evaluation is pragmatic, that is, it relates to the social consequences or use of a particular form of something. For example, George Orwell wrote the short novel, Animal Farm (an art object in verbal form) as a response to Stalinist oppression in Russia and published it. We can evaluate the novel for its formal qualities (e.g. its characterisation), but also for its social consequences. • The forms of content that emerge in our acts of sense-making can be thought of as provisional knowledge artifacts. They express out knowledge about something at a particular time and in a particular place and are always up for revision. The emphasis here is more on knowing as a verb than knowledge as a noun. • There is a cultural dimension to our acts of sense-making. All of us, in varying ways, are members of culturally based sense-making communities.

5. Apollo and Dionysus • Apollo (Apollonian): the dream state or the wish to create order, principium individuationis (principle of individuation), plastic (visual) arts, beauty, clarity, stint to formed boundaries, individuality, celebration of appearance/illusion, human beings as artists (or media of art's manifestation), self-control, perfection, exhaustion of possibilities, creation. • Dionysus (Dionysian): chaos, intoxication, celebration of nature, instinctual, intuitive, pertaining to the sensation of pleasure or pain, individuality dissolved and hence destroyed, wholeness of existence, orgiastic passion, dissolution of all boundaries, excess, human being(s) as the work and glorification of art, destruction.

6. Formulae can be in terms of form features or content features • Biopoems • “This is just to say” by William Carlos Williams (cf Kenneth Koch, Rose, where did you get that red?) • “The Tyger” by William Blake • Haiku

7. This Is Just to Say I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold William Carlos Williams

8. Formulae can be in terms of form features or content features • Biopoems • “This is just to say” by William Carlos Williams (cf Kenneth Koch, Rose, where did you get that red?) • “The Tyger” by William Blake • Haiku

9. The Tyger (from Songs Of Experience)Tyger! Tyger! burning brightIn the forests of the night,What immortal hand or eyeCould frame thy fearful symmetry?In what distant deeps or skiesBurnt the fire of thine eyes?On what wings dare he aspire?What the hand dare sieze the fire?And what shoulder, & what art.Could twist the sinews of thy heart?And when thy heart began to beat,What dread hand? & what dread feet?What the hammer? what the chain?In what furnace was thy brain?What the anvil? what dread graspDare its deadly terrors clasp?When the stars threw down their spears,And watered heaven with their tears,Did he smile his work to see?Did he who made the Lamb make thee?Tyger! Tyger! burning brightIn the forests of the night,What immortal hand or eyeDare frame thy fearful symmetry?William Blake

10. Concrete language Concrete language refers to words that enable a reader to respond sensuously to an experience. Sensuous experience can be visual (sight images), aural (hearing images), tactile (touch images), gustatory (taste images) or olfactory (smell images). Example: The old man lay huddled on the pitted surface of the dusty and rutted road. His skinny arms clasped a ragged and dirty child. Its head lolled back and its eyes had a marble stillness. Near its open mouth, buzzed a large, blue fly.

11. Abstract language The language of ideas or concepts. Its main purpose is to reason through generalization and argument. Example: There is no such thing as a just war. There may be just causes. But there can be no justification for the notion that arguments can be solved by force.

12. Riddles See Riddle Poems, and how to make them: http://www.catb.org/~esr/riddle-poems.html

13. Riddle task Describe a commonplace object (perhaps using the first person pronoun, i.e. “I”, “me”) without naming it.

14. Candles A tiny glow of heated light coloured flakes combined with jagged pieces Slowly creeping down a long tall pole landing in the middle of a pool of friends Or stopping halfway down warm up again Before the fall A golden upside down tear perching on a stilt Pondering over us Causing commotion and movement Streams of running water slowly dying down Our slide is over as we drop like rolling tears Into a hard solid puddle of cement Left alone without light Just shadows of what we once were. Nicola Preston

15. Metaphor as transformation

16. Individual activity Choose a commonplace object and transform it using figurative language.

17. My teacher Her hair is like smog clinging to a building. Her eyes are like death’s army marching Towards me. And her teeth are like jagged rocks, Devouring ships. Her nose is like a blunt pencil.

18. Paired task Imagine a particular kind of person that you can easily portray as a particular animal. Now, using as much figurative language as you can, describe that person eating.

19. It wasn’t easy to watch Steve as he began eating. His piggy eyes glinted in their folds of skin and as he lifted his bulbous head you could see that he had almost no neck. His nose was flat with virtually no bridge and his nostrils were cavernous. But it was his mountainous, square jaw that was most noticeable.When he opened it to shovel in food, his mouth gaped cavernous and pink, with teeth like a line of uneven tombstones.

20. Some terms • In a figurative image, references are made to objects outside the literal situation for the purpose of comparison; • In the case of metaphor, this comparison is a blunt identification (He’s a lion of a man); • In the case of simile, the comparison is softened by the use of ‘like’ or ‘as’ (She was like a wildcat when put upon); • In the case of personification, a non-human object is described in terms of human characteristics (The cold hand of death was upon her).

21. Fast Action Writing

22. Selection and arrangement: Some useful terms • notation • non-syntactical pause • line-break • dropped line • word-spacing

23. Katherine Mansfield: “At the Bay” Very early morning. The sun was not yet risen, and the whole of Crescent Bay was hidden under a white sea-mist. The big bush-covered hills at the back were smothered. You could not see where they ended and the paddocks and bungalows began. The sandy road was gone and the paddocks and bungalows the other side of it; there were no white dunes covered with reddish grass beyond them; there was nothing to mark which was beach and where was the sea. A heavy dew had fallen. The grass was blue. Big drops hung on the bushes and just did not fall; the silvery, fluffy toi-toi was limp on its long stalks, and all the marigolds and the pinks in the bungalow gardens were bowed to the earth with wetness. Drenched were the cold fuchsias, round pearls of dew lay on the flat nasturtium leaves.

24. Concrete poetry Concrete poetry is poetry in which the physical arrangements of words are used to help suggest the author's meaning or theme. Example: Emmett Williams: ‘Like Attracts Like’. See Read * Right * Think (http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=211)

26. Concrete poetry Concrete poetry is poetry in which the physical arrangements of words are used to help suggest the author's meaning or theme. Example: Emmett Williams: ‘Like Attracts Like’. See Read * Right * Think (http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=211)

27. Rhythm Metrical verse: A meter is a pattern of regularly recurring stressed and unstressed syllables. The most common pattern of meter in poetry is called iambic metre which has the [ u / ] pattern. Each [ u / ] unit is called an iambic foot.

28. My Papa’s Waltz by Theodore RoethkeThe whisky on your breathCould make a small boy 1 ;But I held on like 2 :Such waltzing was not easy.We 3 until the pansSlid from the kitchen shelf;My mother’s countenanceCould not 4 itself.The hand that held my wristWas battered on one knuckle;At every step I missedMy right ear scraped a 5 .You beat time on my headWith a palm 6 hard by dirt,then waltzed me off to bedStill 7 to your shirt.

29. The ballad stanza The ice | was here, | the ice | was there, The ice | was all | around; It cracked | and growled | and roared | and howled Like noi | ses in | a swound.

30. Individual challenge How quickly can you write a correct ballad stanza (about someone doing something).

31. Paired task Rewrite a familiar nursery rhyme, using the same rhythm but changing the subject. Be as silly as you like.