truth – don't confuse the narrator

I’m really not one for enforced fun, but this past week I attended a couple of training days where there were ice-breaker activities before several of the sessions.

On the first day we had to arrange ourselves according to how many letters we had in our names – a fairly innocuous activity that was presumably meant to make everyone introduce themselves. In fact it resulted in pained expressions and much counting on fingers. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the polysyllabic Italian lady ended up at the far end.
Continue reading “(not) a singer in a rock-and-roll band”

Several lists of “rules for poetry” have been doing the rounds this week, perhaps in response to these 25 rules for editing poems from Rob Mackenzie for Magma Poetry.

It’s hard to disagree with anything Mackenzie says, particularly as the list is followed by the rider “good poets are always ready to break rules whenever a poem demands it.”

That said, the “rule” that caught my eye was:

15. Consider the poem’s “truth”. Not the literal facts (although those may be important at times) but the emotional resonance. Is the emotion genuine or just received wisdom?

Continue reading “facing up to fiction”