Poetry Salon

Hello Everyone,

before I begin sharing this month’s poetry salon post - I would like to show you these two mixed media collages. They will be added to my shop tomorrow, Sunday 5th July at 7pm UK time. Each measures approx 20.5cm x 18cm. They combine book pages with monoprint drawings and painted collage.

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For July’s salon I want to introduce to you the idea of a poetry jar.

This is not a new invention (nothing is new, exactly) and the concept can be used for keeping hold of ideas for many different creative projects. For story writing, artwork, screenwriting, etc…

When it comes to writing, notebooks, for me, are irreplaceable. They can be any size and at hand day and night. I love writing in a notebook that feels like my own private space, with my choice of paper, lines or no lines - I can write as messily as I like. I can jot down anything and no one is going to pay attention to the book except me.

But alongside notebooks - I like to try different ideas. Particularly when I feel my poetry writing needs to get a little more inventive, playful, absurd - because often when you write poems it is all too easy to get into a format, a rut of what works for you.

I often have to remind myself why I write poems - and the main reason for me is to play with language. Explicit or direct meaning is secondary to me. I love the abstract opportunities poetry allows.

my poetry jar - sunbathing on the windowsill…. I might usually have bits of fabric or wool solar dyeing alongside, but I don’t have anything brewing at the moment. Hopefully soon.

The idea then: over time, as ideas - flashes of phrases, interesting words, come to mind - scribble them on a slip of paper and add that slip to your poetry jar.

You might also copy words/phrases from a notebook.

Have the jar in a place where it does not get forgotten - maybe your kitchen counter. Think of it as your word spaghetti. Don’t think of it as a poem in progress - though you never know, a poem might just be slowly fermenting within your jar. Chances are, the jar will only feed you so much - it’s there to offer starting points, ways into writing poems.

If you work outside the home, write slips and put them in your pocket - then try to remember to add them to the jar. Or, put phrases on your phone and then add them to your jar. I suppose you could have a totally digital poetry jar, if you really wanted. But the paper and jar version is far more interesting, especially as there’s always the possibility you will find other people you live with adding phrases to the jar (so long as you explain what the jar is for) or maybe their loose change (if anyone uses cash any more) or perhaps they’ll simply ignore the jar. Just as the people I live with are very good at ignoring most of my ‘projects’.

Now I’ve shared the idea - what to do with all those slips of paper and words?

After a while of accumulating ideas, you might dip in and take one or two slips from the jar, read them and make them a starting point for writing a poem.

If you are working on a poem and find yourself stuck - or feel the need for new energy, a different spin on things - then take a slip from the jar and see how that might help you.

Take several slips from the jar and arrange them on a table to make a poem. Think of this as a way into your own surrealist experimenting. It will either work, or not - no reflection on what you have written. It will be a chance worth taking though. At the very least, a moment of bafflement!

There is of course the exquisite corpse, the idea is often cited as one thought up by the French Surrealists of early twentieth century Paris, but I have a feeling writers have been playing versions of this game for far longer. You can’t tell me the Brontes, for example, did not play such a game! I can imagine them doing so.

If you are unfamiliar: writing an exquisite corpse poem is a group activity. Someone writes a line, the paper is folded or the line is hidden somehow - and then the paper is passed on to the next person for them to add a line - and so on!

So for this you need to work with others but you might also see your poetry jar as ‘working with others’ especially if you allow other people to add to the jar, but even if it’s you just adding slips - over time, don’t we reveal other versions of ourselves?

Now - of course I would love it if you started to keep your own poetry jar. But even better, in a week’s time please email me the words from one of your slips. I’ll put the slips together and share the collaborative poem via studio notes. I’ll credit everyone who contributed to the poem.

I’ll remind you when to send your line/phrase.

Thanks for reading here and happy poetry spaghetti.

Three random slips - together they do not make a poem - but they give me some ideas. Or, I could just put them back in the jar and try my luck again…. Something might spark a further few ideas to emerge…

Meanwhile, please feel free to share with us what you have been reading lately. Any interesting poets we might like to know about? Please don’t share poems but feel free to link to poet’s websites.