Hello
again everyone! Nearing the end of my time in France and I’ve been busier than
ever with new and old projects. This and next week will contain the last of my
poetry focused blog posts. Now I’ve explained two of the harder forms, leaving
some other forms free to explore in the future, this week we will be hammering
on the immeasurable form, or non-form we call free verse. This kind of poetry,
as you may guess from its name cannot be approached like the last two forms so
far.
Free
verse is one of the most recent forms of poetry, born as blank verse it
evolved, coming to light as we know it today in the early 20th century.
Most notable users of this form include John Milton and T.S. Eliot. The reason
I, perhaps a little zealously claim that free verse is of the 20th
century is because there is a clear cut evolution to blank verse. A short list,
by no means exhaustive will be described this week, these forms include;
concrete poetry, beat poetry, urban poetry, stream of consciousness and sound
poetry.
Concrete
poetry focuses entirely on how a poem is displayed on a page, sometimes the
words on the page can have a direct meaning on the poem, sometimes they have
nearly no significance on the poem’s meaning, they are just there for display.
It is a type of poetry which I, myself have only limited competence with,
preferring more formal types of poetry.
Beat
poetry is much more international, born in New York in the 1940’s, reaching its
height very quickly, even today it is still going strong. Beat poetry focuses
again on the aesthetic usually set in the city, many poems in this category
feel as though you are pounding the pavements in the city, remarking on things
that you don’t usually remark on in everyday life.
Urban poetry is the umbrella of
many forms of poetry that focus on the everyday, but this on its own would be
boring. Urban poetry is especially good at the technique of ‘othering’ making
the everyday seem foreign or alien so that we become familiar with them all
over again, touching or smelling these things for the first time, twice or
several times.
The stream of consciousness is
another form of poetry that is regarded by many as a very hit and miss branch.
This type of poetry permits no editing, if you want the real deal, quite simply
you can combine this with any type of poem or none at all. To describe it
bluntly, you start writing and let your mind take you away with the poem,
stopping once your train of thought has ended – thus you have a completed poem,
for better or for worse.
The
final branch of free verse I will mention, sound poetry, is the polar opposite
of concrete poetry, its appearance on the page bears little or no significance,
what is most important is the sound of the words and the image they conjure in
the reader, or rather listener’s mind. At the moment this form of poetry seems
to be in vogue.
There
are no rules to writing Free verse poetry, so I can’t really make too many
practical suggestions in devices to include in your poetry. And by this point,
if you have mastered the other mentioned forms then you should probably need no
suggestions in this. I would suggest, two things however, some forms in urban
poetry often are written in the first person, having an inwards commentary or
addressing the reader, they can blur the line between poetry and prose very
often. Remember though poetry that you become too emotionally attached to may
often not reach it’s potential, it is important to measure passion with
technique in poetry.
My usual
hideaways
My book is now
available to order at
http://www.amazon.co.uk/MR-Lockes-Diary-Joseph-Clark/dp/1630684007
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