When beginning to write poetry, many poets think that all that is required of them is to compose poems. However, along with reading a lot of books, revising extensively, submitting their work to journals, presses and performing one's work on tours, there are many other activities that poets can become involved in to enrich their art and to enable poetry to flourish. These activities are not only essential for a poet, but they can be enjoyable and even profitable!
Things Poets Can Do With Their Minds: Memorization & Research
Traditionally, poetry was taught in school through memorization. Poetry is a rhythmic, musical art form with rhymes, assonance, alliteration, line breaks, breath pauses and other elements that demand that it be read aloud. Today, we tend to memorize very little. However poets can enlarge their own sense of the art form by memorizing poetry on their own, taking another poet's words into their minds to both honour them and to learn from their particular patterns, sounds and content.
Poets can also spend time researching specific subject matter, whether it's the history of the Spanish Empire or the nesting habits of the mockingbird and then invest their poems with this factual texture and informative vision. Research not only adds to content but it also contributes new lexicons to poetry from troubadour forms to Inuit words for "snow." In such a manner, poetry becomes richer and more expansive.
Things Poets Can Do to Help Other Poets and Poetry Itself: Reviews, Presses, Translation
Poets may need solitude to create but they don't create in isolation. Poetry relies not only on book buyers and an audience, but also on critics, publishers and translators. Writing reviews for literary magazines or newspapers is one key way that poets can give back to other poets. Reading their texts thoroughly and with an eye for detail and quality, then writing balanced, fair yet astute criticism on it, poets not only show they value the work of others, but that they care about poetry in general growing as an art form.
Another, more challenging means that poets can show support to their art is becoming a small press publisher. On a shoestring budget one can still create broadsides, chapbooks and zines that showcase the work of other poets and add to the beauty and integrity of the art.
Poets can also translate the works of other poets whether or not they know those languages. Working with someone who does, they can then transform the skeletal meaning of the poem into an act of language, attending to form and lyricism. In this way, poets work to bring the poetry of others to a reading public and so diversify the art of poetry itself.
Things Poets Can Do With Other Artists: Collaboration, Multimedia Work.
Poetry only grows more exciting as a discipline when it is created in combination with other artists. Sometimes these may be poets who compose texts together or it may be a poet working with an artist who creates through paints, instruments or a camera. Working with a team to make a film or to put on a play can be a valuable learning experience for a poet at any stage.
Additionally, learning a range of other art forms is also vital for the poet's craft. Rather than being resistant to multimedia work, the poet who tries to snap pictures, sculpt or shoot a video, is likely to enhance their own art and find multiple means through which to not only express themselves but to contribute to the expansion of poetry in general.
Things Poets Can Do In The World: Travel, Get out of Comfort Zones
Poets may need to spend a significant amount of time alone, at their desks, but leaving the house or studio and engaging in more far-ranging opportunities can also be vital. Travel is crucial for the poet, whether it's only traveling by bus and listening to conversations while observing the landscape or, more adventurously, escaping to lands where one doesn't know the language or customs. Travel can unsettle perceptions and provide one with new lexicons and imagery that will feed future poems.
Getting out of one's comfort zone is also necessary at times. While this may mean travel, it can also entail perhaps working in a shelter for the homeless, learning a martial art, becoming an apple picker in an orchard, volunteering at a hospice or a range of other possibilities. The point is that daring experiences nourish poems while also giving the poet satisfaction on other levels outside of their art.
Poets are not only writers of poems. They have a wealth of other talents and experiences that both connect them to society, enhance their own art and, in the process, increase the vitality of poetry in the world.
Catherine Owen - Catherine Owen, MA 2001, has published ten award winning books of poetry/prose. Her writing is lyrical, well-researched and fully ...
