writing and writers – Page 159 – don't confuse the narrator

no going back

The time before last when I upgraded to a new laptop, I was very careful to keep copies of all my old writing; so the other day when I went looking for an article written in 1999, I found several versions of it on my current computer.

Sadly, none of them were compatible with the programs I have available, and when I opened one of the documents, it began like this:

##MMXPR3#C#CXP#########################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################.### ###.#######�### ###�###�###�############################### ###
#######

There are 115 pages, with huge blank expanses and intermittent passages like the above. The three-page article is also in there, but it would require more patience than I have to hand in order to extract it.
Continue reading “no going back”

of poetry, maths and cars

Although I was brought up surrounded by poetry, I don’t remember being aware that any of the adults around me actually wrote poems; not even light verse. Not until I was studying for A levels, that is.
Continue reading

the present poetic II

(See earlier post the present poetic)

I took the “Catless […]” poem to the writing group last night to see if I could get any more ideas about the relationship in poetry between present tense and first person.

Discussion certainly ensued, but there were no definitive answers. (So I’ll be able to go on discussing it here as often as I want, and at whatever length seems appropriate!)
Continue reading “the present poetic II”

eternal questions

I have been struggling with line breaks in my poetry for years. Even so, I am a bit taken aback by a friend’s email promising me a copy of a text “which should definitively answer the question of ‘Why did you put the […] line break there!?'”

In my last post (on the present poetic) and in follow up comments, I have been pondering some of the reasons behind choosing to write in the present tense (a subject I intend to revisit soon).

In other posts about first-person narrators I have considered the question of the writer/narrator dichotomy and why I so often write in the first person if I am not writing about myself.
Continue reading “eternal questions”

the present poetic

I recently sent a very early draft of a poem to a friend for comments. The piece began:

Catless for too many years, I have forgotten
the building of trust. She spends an hour
pacing, investigating every wall and angle,
exploring draughts from window frames
and under each door, establishing
her points of exit.

Leaving aside criticisms of the participles and the prosaic nature of the verbs – it was a draft, after all – I am interested in the comment that was made after the break on ‘spends’:
Continue reading “the present poetic”