​Sat. April 8th, 2017: the launch of this series of get-togethers and learning sessions for London, Ont. poets who would like to learn more poetics, brush up on what they've forgotten, or just get to know some fellow poets. 

(Earlier we announced it as April 1st, but, sorry, the room wasn't available.)

​Group founder, Stan Burfield, will be the 1st episode teacher, discussing something he has forever been guessing at: line breaks. 

The general idea behind the group:

1. This group is be mainly for poets (and poetry lovers) with less formal education in poetry than they would like to have. For example, yours truly.

2. Because poetry is like chess in that a person can become endlessly more proficient at it (because of its ancient lineage and because bright people have been studying it and writing and teaching about it for nearly that whole time), there is a God-awful lot to learn. Thus the world of poets can be divided into two groups: those with a formal university education specializing to some degree in poetry, and those without one.

3. The group's professors will be the group members themselves. Those who would like to will pick a topic from the world of poetics, research it, and present it, discuss it, show examples of it in poems, and generally get the group thinking about how, why, and when to apply it, and what happens if it's not applied, and so on. In other words, by the end of each session, everyone should have a new tool at their disposal to help them enrich their poetry. (And to help them read others' poetry.)

4. Topics will include especially the aspects of poetics most commonly employed in contemporary poetry, but not limited to them. Some examples: the major aspects of poetry, including lines, syntax, diction, trope, rhetoric, rhythm, meter, stanza and then some of the zillion sub-categories like enjambment, stress, scansion, allusion, imagism, metaphor, free verse, feeling, metonymy, allusion, abstraction, how to read a poem, etc etc.

Send me an email so I can put you on the invite list: burfield@live.com

Thanks, Stan Burfield

...but when some of our really sharp poets get wound up at the mic the main thing I experience is a dull sinking feeling. And the need for another cup of coffee.

Well, we at ‘Open Mic Night’ (I’ve ...heard that term floating around lately), and the people over at Brick Books, have come up with two different solutions to this one hurdle that’s very common at poetry readings like ours.

Our’s is to post a batch of our featured poet’s poems on the internet (here and on our Facebook page) before the reading so everyone can read at least some of the poet’s poems as many times as they want to. And deeply.

Brick books has a totally different solution, but one just about as good. Podcasts. Put your headphones on and listen to Canada’s major poets read some of their poems, over and over and over...as many times as it takes. You can even stop them mid-stride and tell them to reread that bit. Anything -- run it through a voice analyzer. It’s like learning a language from a CD. Replay it till you get it:   Brick Books Podcasts
Here’s a fantasy of mine, just to take it to the limit. Tell me what you think: We bring a projector to the reading and have each poem, exactly as it was written, on a big screen behind the poet. You read the poem and at the same time hear the poet read it as it was intended to be read.

I just shared an article here from Kathryn Mockler’s page that has been read by more people than anything else we’ve had here.

True, it has one of those emotional hooks that are hard to ignore, being it’s a list of things NOT to do. We all enjoy comparing nots. 

Nevertheless, it made me realize that there must be a lot of blogs and pages out there run by local poets which contain very interesting content that I could share here. So I’m starting to comb through them. But it’s an awful lot of work, since interesting content has been posted for years, not just NOW. I won’t be able to find much of that. 

So I have a request: If you have something on your page that you think might be of interest to a lot of us London-area poets, please tell me about it. Also if you see something somewhere else, likewise. My only constraints are that the sources be in the London area, and that they be of general interest to poets and/or poetry enthusiasts.

I’ll make sure to thank your page or blog if I can’t actually link to it. That will bring more readers your way, and all in all it will help London poets and poetry enthusiasts get to know each other. 

By Kathryn Mockler (UWO poetry prof.)
 
Below is a list that I compiled with students in my poetry class.

Obviously there are great poems that include elements  on this list; however, these are words, phrases,  rhyme-patterns, metaphors, etc  that I've found are overused by writers new to poetry, and the use of these  elements or words can and, most often do, result in one-dimensional, cliché  poetry.

• centre justification
• capping first letter of every line
• overly dramatic or overused words such as tears, soul, quivering, being,  yearning, pain, existence 
• hearts/heartbroken/hearts beating/bleeding hearts
• love poems (I love my parents, my boyfriend, my grandparents)
• poems about homeless people (unless you’ve been homeless)
• excessive use of abstract words like hope, joy, love, alienation, loneliness
• predictable hard end-rhymes, sing-songy rhymes
• referring to the sky as inky
• using the description blue-black
• using different font sizes or types
• cliché phrases or dead metaphors as in “cherry red lips” or “out like a  light” or her "sea blue eyes"
• references to stars in the sky
• excessive use of adjectives
• excessive use of “ing” words – climbing, falling, pumping, yearning, glinting
• using sound effects: crunch, crunch, crunch
• antiquated language – thou or shall or wanton
• avoid vast generalizations or general language
• pat poems - poems that are closed because the poet directly explains the  theme of the poem to reader or the metaphor is so obvious that the poem becomes  one-dimensional 
• trick poems - poems that trick the reader to thinking that he or she is  reading a poem about a person and then we find out that the subject of the poem  is really a dog or bird 

One of the most effective ways to learn how to write contemporary, publishable literary poetry is to read poetry that was published, in say, that last ten or twenty years.

This is the hard part because there's a lot of stuff out there that you won't like.

But go  to your local bookstore or library and start pulling books off the shelves.  Read  a few lines from each poet and ask yourself--what draws you in, what makes you  stop reading?

Buy the books of the poets you like and read them over and  over. Underline favourite passages and try to figure out what these writers are  doing that has had such an impact on you.

Then go back and look at your  own poems from the point of view of a reader.

How-to books are okay for  learning the elements of poetry, but your teachers should be other poets.  
 

Ed. Kathryn Mockler was the featured reader at the November 2012 London Open Mic Poetry Night. She has an MFA in creative writing from UBC, has been published in many journals, has two collections in print, has had her work screened several times on television and screened at a number of festivals. Currently she teaches creative writing at UWO and co-edits the UWO online journal ‘The Rusty Toque” at www.therustytoque.com.
 

 

 Yes, we  will gladly take your poem and post it here, on our Facebook
page and also on our website. 

There's a catch, though. There has to be. If not, we would probably be
overrun with poems, and more than one from everyone. The problem is that in
order to winnow them down, I would have to judge them. And I certainly don't
have that ability. And even if I found a way to judge them well, I would be
leaving a trail of angry losers in my wake. Just as in any contest with only one
winner. So....

 My catch is that you have to write an essay for us. Then you’ve earned the
right to attach one poem to it. The essay has to somehow relate to poetry. A
good idea you had, an intuition, a revelation in the sense of a sudden
understanding, even an opinion. But you need to write it in the form of a
personal essay, not the formal kind you remember from school. A personal essay
has no citations, no footnotes, no bibliography, only you and your ideas. In a
personal essay you are the only expert that counts, and you tell your idea
breathlessly just as you would to your best  friend on the phone.
Including, if possible, how and where you came about the idea. Or, if part of it
is not your own, which is guaranteed, where that came from, in a general sense.
And so on. I wrote a personal essay below about writing personal essays, if
you’re interested. It’s called, ‘4th Poetry Night Essay.... Wanted:You’.

 Have fun.

THE PROBLEM WITH SLAMMING SLAM by Bryton
McKinnon

There is a common misconception about the genre of "slam"  poetry, that it all sounds the same. Yes, the syncopated rhythm is replicable. What I often see are very young poets repeating what they perceive as good poetry. But many developed poets grow to understand that they have their own voice that must be cultivated.

However like many of the poets who are not influenced by the genre of spoken word... poetry, many slam people still imitate other writers' works; imitation being the highest form of flattery. I would like to make it clear that we veterans of the London poetry slam do not enjoy this cadence and work to develop our own matured writing voice just like everyone who attends Poetry London and London Poetry Open Mic.

A little context to the evolution of poetry events: Poetry slams started as a reaction to the sophisticated, upper brow poetry reading all too common prior to the 1980's. Still relevant today, “noobs” would be put at the end of the night, after all the popular poets performed. The result was an empty venue and belittled
writers. A poetry slam was built so everyone could have a chance to share. To
let all styles of writing be shared on stage. Journalism, skits, novella excerpts, sonnets, etc. There is a 3 minute time limit to let everyone have a chance to share.

As for the political/catharsis nature of many poems, with slam that depends totally on the writers who attend. However, many poets/writers pre-judge the event as political or for only one style, and don’t see the totality of creative writing. They prematurely judge and so don’t attend the event due to bias. Slam isn't about a style of poetry, it is about everyone having a chance to share.

In regards to the competition aspect, that is based in dadism or absurdism. It is a farce. Points cannot be given to poetry. We have a saying in the writing community that winning is unpredictable; in other words, "any given sunday". The idea behind a cash prize is that we try to encourage people to continue developing their voice and reward writers for such.

So, if there was a lack of representation from non-spoken word poets at slams,, it is not because of the structure of the event, but the outsiders making judgements. Our slam is the "show the love" slam. We accept all. Even better, we encourage young writers by letting them share their work, just as was done at the first Wednesday Poetry Open Mic.

Fostering poetry in London. I do not believe an "us" and "they" perspective would
legitimately build the London literary community. That being said two slams are
scheduled for October. On the 19th at the London Music Club from 8 to 11 and a
Youth Slam on the 27th at King's University College from 6 to 9. I hope to see
many first-timers – young and old – share their stories, ideas, and messages!


Comments?

    Get in its way.
    The opposite is just as true.
    I’m a mediocre poet, but when I read my poems aloud they tend to go over well. They
have an impact. 
     I thank my blind father for that. When I was a kid I would sometimes read to him, to give him a break from braille, or his talking  books, which both of us would often listen to. The readers of the talking books were always very good. We soon forgot their existence and only heard the story. I picked up on this so that when I read to Dad I tried to make the feeling and drama of the story overpower the dryness of my voice. I still read like that when I read poems to others. It works. 
     On the other hand, some of the best poets regularly butcher their poems. I often go to hear some of Canada’s greatest poets read at the Poetry London readings. I listen as carefully as I can but usually am left wishing they would read them over again. I’m lucky if I grasp more than half of any poem.
     The voices and the style of reading are usually so distracting, and the speed of reading so fast, that by the time I really take in a good phrase and enjoy the beauty of it I have usually missed the next line completely. I soon find myself putting most of my energy into just trying to figure out what’s going on and ignoring the subleties and beauty of the poetics. 
     I admit that many listeners are quicker and more focussed than I am. But let me give you a specific example. At one of the Poetry London readings the editor of one of Canada’s premier poetry journals, highly esteemed for his own poetry, gave a reading. A workshop was held before the reading, as usual, examining two poems by us local poets, and two by the featured readers. This guy’s poem was amazing. It had a huge impact on me. I can remember parts of it to this day. So I was really looking forward to hearing him read it aloud. I thought I might get more out of it than  I already had, by how he emphasized or deemphasized certain words. Well, even knowing the whole poem so intimately, from such a recent examination, most of it passed by me without any contact. I was shocked. And angry. I thought, how can he so casually do that to such an incredible poem? And that was only one of many he read. Imagine the incredible stuff I completely missed.
 `The worst thing he did was read every poem with some kind of a weird, monotonous rhythm that broke up all the phrases and sentences into totally illogical pieces. It made them impossible to follow. I suppose he was trying to get the look of the poem on the printed page across to his listeners without actually showing it to them. He would have been much better served by using an overhead projector. A poem written on paper and a reading are two completely different art forms. A person can’t hear a visual form.
     But reading a poem on paper, you can get both the form and the content at once. If you focus primarily on the content the look will still have its impact. And if one intrudes on the other too much, you can simply reread it. But none of this works at a reading. The only way to really communicate the poem is to ignore the look of it and concentrate on the content, the meaning, the phrases, the sentences. Then, if the poem is truly poetic, those poetics will to some extent make themselves felt in the normal reading of the sentences. In other words, the sentences will be different than if they had been written as prose. 
     But forgetting the look of the poem is only the beginning of communicating it. It only points the way. The reader has to really try to communicate, just as people talking to each other have to. Communicating largely involves empathy with the listener, imagining how the listener is taking everything that is spoken. If a word is spoken one way, will that lead the listener astray? Preventing misinterpretations is a very big problem in written poetry, and is part of the difficulty of both writing and reading a poem on the page, but to then read it aloud poorly is to compound the problem dramatically. And the listener has no time to think about meanings. 
     The listener has no time because the poem is usually read too quickly. Many impatient conversationalists speak far too quickly. They never seem to realize that even though they already know what they are going to say before they begin, the listener seldom does. The listener not only has to understand the words and the grammar but also must try to figure out the correct meaning at the same time.
The speaker only has to say the words. One requires more time than the other.  Many good poets also seem to be ignorant of this lack on the part of their  audience. And to grasp a poem takes much more than does grasping a simple  conversation. Reading slowly is essential.
     But few poets read with this kind of empathy for their audience. Reading each poem twice would make up for it, but that never happens. As a result, I often find myself giving up after the first few lines, shrugging my shoulders, and daydreaming through the rest of the poem.  
     Here’s my recipe for a good reading: The reader shouldn’t start out with the idea of trying to get across the complexities of the written poem, but instead should begin at the other end of the spectrum, as if the reading isn’t a reading but is actually just a conversation and the simple story in the poem is all that is important to get across. Then, with that, the reader can add more and more complexities from the written version until an optimal point is reached. Stop there. Beyond that, both content and poetics rapidly lose their stickiness until, at some point, the whole thing just bounces off the skull.