Batch writing poetry may not sound muse-driven and romantic, but here’s one way in which it is.
I have been writing poetry in batches lately. As strange and unlikely as it may sound, this has become my way for some reasons. Being a freelancer, I have had to develop a certain discipline in my everyday life. There’s no one to report to, and no one checks in on me in a business way. There’s also no one guaranteeing my salary at the end of the month. I admit that this lifestyle is not for everyone, but it is also extremely suitable for some people, and I truly believe I’m one of them.
But that’s another post for another day.
One way of ensuring that I get enough writing done is by batching my poetry. It may not sound romantic or muse-driven, but it has elements of both. In this post, I explain how to plan for it.
Inevitably, some days you will feel dry of ideas. That’s where you need to use your poet’s eyes at their sharpest focus. So let me tell you about the day I wrote this poem. Flitting around in an over-sized t-shirt and my first coffee of the day thinking What am I going to write about today? on what must have been week 3 of my month-long stint, I looked down at my cup and the turmoil I was causing inside it. I probably do this a lot, I thought. I’m not the most graceful of people. How do I not spill my coffee more often? And, barely even thinking of the poem yet, and because I’m a scientist at heart and love to dive into random knowledge, I looked up the physics behind this.
Now, bear with me, it’s going to get just a little weird.
I was also reading, because I’m always reading, a bunch of poetry at the time, one of them being a re-visit to the poem For the Sleepwalkers by Edward Hirsch, which I felt familiar with. In the early morning soup of my brain, the two mingled together. I acted cool, as though I was entering the room where the facts I just learned were flirting with the poem I’d just read. I hid in the background and let them get to know each other without my input. Is it magic or madness? No. I like to call it ‘a soft focus.’ You might think of it as letting things sink in, finding connections organically. Normally, time would be on your side, right? The connection would come eventually, maybe, or not at all. You might forget about it because now you’ve acted too cool.
But I was in a situation where I needed the first draft of the poem. It didn’t need to be anywhere close to perfect, but it needed to get written. Then I looked more closely and the poem easily lent itself to my topic of choice with the words: sleep (for some, the opposite of caffeine), thirst, and black (my preferred way).
What did I like about the poem? In particular, the line “We have to learn to trust our hearts like this.” The connections fired up. We trust that things will work. That our cup of coffee will mostly hold itself together, molecule by molecule, delivering the black liquid to its intended destination. We make many mistakes and miscalculations, but our paths somehow correct themselves despite this. So, too, with the coffee in its cup. So, too, with our hearts, our strong and delicate hearts, we pump too much (caffeine, heaviness) into sometimes.
The poem was waiting to be written, but it needed a third element to keep it together, which would come out in its structure. Is there a science to trusting our hearts? No. But there is a science to how liquid moves and behaves in a cup. I wanted to create contrast here. I wanted the metaphor to be nuanced and cheeky. Cheeky because I know there is no science to how darkness haunts our hearts. What better way to portray this than to divide the stanzas into theories?
I expect a voice piped up at this point and wondered whether this was diminishing to the subject, whether it was ridiculous to bring so much formula to the organ that most lacks formula. Yes, I said, yes. Do it afraid. Create the contrast.
And so, I tell you this: Let the poem find you busy. Be a thinker and a creator. When you’re challening yourself to write a poem every day for a while, you start looking for poetry all around you. And when you notice it’s there… that’s when the magic comes back in.
Access Molecules Unlimited, where the poem Coffee ring was published.
