Year of Poetry Update - Week 37

This week was a little less productive than last but still quite good for what has become the standard ritual of Sunday plus a weekday afternoon of writing.

I also engaged in some guerrilla poetry at my library, constructing a Poet Tree and delegating staff to cut out green paper in the shape of leaves so that community members and school children could write short poetry and place it on the tree.  

I will post a picture when the tree has sprouted some more leaves.

The Writing

This week I spent all my writing time redrafting a short poem that I considered mostly complete. This was undertaken for the purpose of trying out the suggested techniques in Ron Pretty's book.  I am happy with the result and will continue on tomorrow as the close reading begun today has me considering that I am pretty one dimensional in my presentation of the senses.

On the submissions front - no news is good news.


The Study

As mentioned last week I received Ron Pretty's Creating Poetry, so much of this weeks 30 minute portion of study was spent reading and noting his section on drafting. Here he takes the drafts of several Australian poets and looks at the differences between the various stages - what was added, the techniques that they use, etc.

Close Reading

My copy of Lisa Brockwell's Earth Girls turned up on Monday so today I spent an hour doing a close reading of her poem Blackout.  I am particularly impressed with her use of the senses in this poem and of sense switching i.e. when you begin describing things that are normally perceived in one sense in terms of another.

For the Statbadgers:


Total time: 4:35 (386:13) hrs


poem writing = 2.30 (176:16) hrs

close reading =1:00(78:02) hrs

technique/theory 0:30(87:13) hrs

reflection = 0:35 (31:33) hrs

Poetry written:

0(34) poems completed


(1)16 poems in draft


1 poem abandoned


1 poem facing execution at dawn



Poems Submitted:


0(19 in total) poems



Poems Published:


0(7) poem



Live Performances:

0(2)

Interviews:

0(1)

Rejections:


0(8) poems