Poetry DRILL
Poetry DRILL
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Poetry DRILL
Most occupations and vocations have drills or exercises to help those new to job or to renew lost interest, and so there is, appropriately in an anagram, a poetry DRILL.
D- Dare to dream and look at everything from a different point of view or several points at the same time without losing a central focus. Basically, just don’t take time to smell the roses- be the rose. Write how you bloom, the irony of the thorns to reach beauty. I once wrote a poem about a fire plug on a street near a school. What has it seen and the changes in the children over the year, and how did it feel when it saw dog come near? How many times was it used by firemen, or how many times has it been painted? Here’s where the imagination plays, and creativity has the space to explore the not so obvious.
R- Realize that your audience is not roses or fire plugs: its people who want to expand their thoughts or horizons, and poets or other kinds of writers can help them. Also writer need an audience for their work, so it’s a good relationship that exists under the right conditions. Know your audience and written work has to be real enough for the audience to accept the surrealism of it all- Did Alice really go through that looking glass and meet a bunch of strange characters at a tea party? Did George Lucas take us a time far into the future with even more strange aliens?
I – Investigate the possibilities of your subject of the poem and use the creative processes to accomplish this. One draft is not a masterpiece. Inspire other with work you do, and you can be inspired to be more of a writer or poet at the same time. Illuminate light on subjects that are considered to be plain or ordinary since they are really the things and experiences we deal with every day. The fantasy is winning the lottery and never having to work again, but the reality is what we have to do to earn the money to buy that lottery ticket.
L - Love what you do. This thought inspired Steve Jobs to change the world with his electronic machines. As writer’s, be willing to take a risk and learn about new things and places since writers write about what they know. Experience is always the best teacher, but we can learn from other people’s experiences and make them our own as a base for developing a style of writing that you call your own the more you write. There is a say that inspiration is 90 percent perspiration, or effort.
L - Use language to your advantage. As an English teacher for multi-grades including college, words are powerful, and there are many historical examples where people have risen to fame or lost their power use to the information in words. Also use language beyond the basics of sentence structure, capitalization, spelling and punctuation. Like a musician who struggles to learn the notes for an instrument, there comes a time when the basics are mastered and like breathing the instrument becomes a part of the person playing it, taking the creativity to new levels of professionalism. Know the basics intuitively before you start breaking the rules. Writers can break the rules, but there has to be a reason for it other than ignorance. Writers make up new words or apply new meanings to old words, and that is what keeping language as a living thing. Who would have known what Internet meant in the 1930’s? Also here’s a note about the use of profanity in writing. I believe there are enough words in the English language to where use of profanity is the exception, not the rule. Its use depends on the audience being served, and the intended effect . E.E. Cummings knew the basics of writing, but he broke the rules for distinct reasons. I’m sure if he had to write a regular essay, he would use more periods.
This is the writer’s DRILL.
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