Experimental Poetry 9: Anarchic poetry

You want anarchy? You got it! Anarchy is a state of disorder caused by rejection of rules and authority. It is the basis of a number of art movements including Abstract impressionism, Surrealism, Dadaism and punk rock. Poetry too has its anarchic poets. Read for example Ezra Pound, James Joyce or e. e. cummings. The latter rejected the use of upper case letters, hence the alternative presentation of his name. Edward Estlin Cummings as I will present him, experimented mercilessly not only with words, but also the form in which they were presented. He even misused punctuation deliberately to create feelings of disorientation, fragmentation and unease. In short, cummings used just about every aspect of language to create atmosphere and hammer home his messages. 

Method 15: Syntactic Deviance. Here, there is a total lack of regard for the conventional. You really will need to step outside your comfort zone, and this is where most of you will give up. And yet, if you do pursue this avenue of experimentation, you'll discover new ways of presenting your art of poetry which might otherwise have passed you by. Forget all the rules of grammar and punctuation. Spell things differently. Create sentences without verbs. Turn the writing upside down. Write diagonally or in reverse. Be absurd in what you write. Everything and anything goes. 

For me, this is one of Cummings' best poems: It dwells on loneliness and has the metaphor (a leaf falling) inside the word loneliness. It is inventive, disruptive and unexpected. In short, it is anarchic poetry. It breaks all the rules, including fragmentation of the words to signify a slow falling of the leaf. 

Method 16: Morphological Innovation. This is where you might dispense with conventional words and create your own. You might like to take a word and extend it to convey a meaning. Delicious becomes un-delicious, or chocolate becomes chocolate-ness. Go even further and blend words together to make new ones, or neologisms. A rabbit's burrow becomes its rabbitat and agonising over the loss of your luggage becomes bagonising. Be inventive. There are no rules, and you'll create your own language of poetry! These new words are known as portmanteaus and they are a part of morphological innovation. 

Method 17: Ad Nauseum. This Latin phrase means 'until sick'. This is the point in your poetry where you can go completely out on a limb and do totally unpredictable stuff. And then do it again, and again, and again, until it sickens, and then keep doing it until you run out of paper. 

Steve Wheeler

Previous posts in this series

Experimental Poetry 1: Found Poetry
Experimental Poetry 2: Stream of Consciousness
Experimental Poetry 3: Fake Translations
Experimental Poetry 4: Overlapping Voices
Experimental Poetry 5: Random Prompts
Experimental Poetry 6: The Movie Method
Experimental Poetry 7: Unexpected End Rhymes
Experimental Poetry 8: Calligrams

Image from Wikimedia used under a Creative Commons licence.

Experimental Poetry 8: Calligrams

Calligrams - also known as concrete poetry- are  pieces of text where the design or layout of the letters creates a visual image related to the meaning of the words themselves. The calligram above is by French poet Guillaume Apolinnaire and it's one of the best examples. He has used words such as bouche (for the mouth) and nez (for nose) as he describes his lover.

Concrete poetry is not easy to accomplish, but if you are determined, you will able to create something that is not only an interesting poem, but also a visually appealing piece of art. Here's how it's done:

Method 13: Concrete Poetry. All calligrams start with an idea. Think of something simple... like a cup, a heart or a star. Their shapes are idealised, and have a cultural resonance. They are all easily recognisable. 

Now write a poem about the object you've chosen. It needn't necessarily rhyme. You just need enough words to be able to create your calligram. If you create your calligram using a word processor, you'll be able to change the size of the text, the spacing, and even the font style very quickly. However, until you make it concrete, by either screen capturing it, or exporting it into a pdf file, you can't be certain what it will look like if you share it on social media.

Here's an example called Swan and Shadow by John Hollander, which depicts in words and image exactly what he wishes to convey about the grace of a swan floating on its mirror image in calm water at dawn. 

Method 14: Hand-made Calligrams. An alternative is to create it by drawing it on paper, or even by cutting out text and pasting it onto paper. Start by creating a pencil outline, and then gradually filling in the shape with the words, using a more permanent medium. It will take time, trial and error, and lots of corrections. But eventually, you'll have your own calligram and you'll be justifiably proud of what you've achieved. But do be careful. Calligrams are very addictive.

Steve Wheeler 

Previous posts in this series

Experimental Poetry 1: Found Poetry
Experimental Poetry 2: Stream of Consciousness
Experimental Poetry 3: Fake Translations
Experimental Poetry 4: Overlapping Voices
Experimental Poetry 5: Random Prompts
Experimental Poetry 6: The Movie Method
Experimental Poetry 7: Unexpected End Rhymes

Top image from Wikimedia Commons, Swan image from Pinterest used under a Creative Commons licence.

Experimental Poetry 7: Unexpected End Rhymes

For me, poetry is the art of constructing sentences and stanzas in a novel and entirely unexpected way. That means surprising readers with strange confections of words, and avoiding the predictable. One of the most predictable facets of sub-par poetry is the end rhyme. Badly thought-out, lazy or forced rhymes in poetry detract from the message, musicality or aesthetics of the piece. And there are so many bad rhyming poems! If you're intent on using end rhymes, then at least make them unusual, unpredictable, comic or perhaps even shocking. 

Method 12: Unexpected End Rhymes. One of the stanzas in a comic poem I wrote many years ago goes like this:

Got to write a poem and I got to write it soon
They've given me from now until the end of September

Yes, it's jarring, but it always raises a laugh from my audiences when I perform it live, because everyone expects me to say June. Comedy is often about the unexpected. And comedy has its place in poetry, especially the performance genre.

Even more absurd is another stanza toward the end of the poem:

I wandered lonely as a cloud amongst the forest glades and jungles
And all at once I came upon a host of golden ... daffodungles

I'm depicting the struggles of the poet as he tries to force an end rhyme. Poetry shouldn't be about forcing end rhymes and in the process losing the meaning or the message of the poem. Too many poets seem to think (especially when they are new to the scene) that all poetry must rhyme. It doesn't, and the worst kind of poetry is poetry where the rhyme has been forced or contrived. In the above poem I'm making fun of this approach, and saying - look, if you're going to rhyme, make it meaningful, and if you can't achieve that, make it shocking, unexpected, comic instead. 

Steve Wheeler

Previous posts in this series

Experimental Poetry 1: Found Poetry
Experimental Poetry 2: Stream of Consciousness
Experimental Poetry 3: Fake Translations
Experimental Poetry 4: Overlapping Voices
Experimental Poetry 5: Random Prompts
Experimental Poetry 6: The Movie Method

Photo from Flickr used with a Creative Commons licence

Experimental Poetry 6: The Movie Method

Some of my poetry is considered surreal and dreamlike. I've even published some of my more bizarre dreamscape style poems. Some appear in the collection Nocturne, which is a night-inspired panorama of dream-state poetry. But some of those dream-like poems were not actually inspired by dreams. They were inspired by random sampling of sounds and images while I was very much awake and listening to conversations, or in the case below, watching a movie.

Here's a brief section of my poem Strange Things Happen When You're Dreaming:

The cracks form into crevices like canyons drawn with crayons. The scorched mud coalesces into quintessential islands. Down from the highlands bitter winds are blowing in their surges, as they whistle into sand filled ears that nothing ever purges. You run, but shadows follow you, descending and ascending ... they lengthen ... as the sun goes down you see the light is bending, and you fly so high, so very high o’er land without a sound to keep your fearful feet a-running over barren desert ground, and in the distance, you can hear a thousand voices screaming: and everyone will tell you strange things happen when you’re dreaming.

The technique works like this:

Method 11: Movie Sampling. Choose any movie you like. Play two or three simultaneously if you wish. Begin to write, and as you do, randomly listen to the dialogue or glance up at the sequences of images and try to capture them. You won't have much time, so do it quickly because the scene or dialogue will rapidly change. As with much of the text you generate with a random writing method, you'll get a lot of seemingly unintelligible sentences or phrases. It really doesn't matter. Leave it for a while, and then return to it. Read it to see what emerges. With the poem above, I scribbled down many random ideas from watching the movie in real time, and then returned days later to transform it into some form or rhythmic narrative, with the internal rhymes added.

Steve Wheeler 

Images from Rawpixel used under a Creative Commons licence

Previous posts in this series:

Experimental Poetry 1: Found Poetry
Experimental Poetry 2: Stream of Consciousness
Experimental Poetry 3: Fake Translations
Experimental Poetry 4: Overlapping Voices
Experimental Poetry 5: Random Prompts

Experimental Poetry 5: Random Prompts

Poets are always looking for inspiration for their writing. Sometimes, an idea, or phrase or picture will jump onto your head. It's easy to write a poem from that kind of inspiration. At other times, the old writer's block sets in and you struggle to find that great idea for your next poem. It's then you might need to force it a little. Here are three more methods:

Method 9: Random Words. There are lots of free to use Random Word generators online such as this one and this one. Select one and use it to create a list of random, unrelated words. Any one (or all) of those words might be the one(s) that prompts your next masterpiece.

Method 10: Random Images. It's easy to find random images. You'll find them in magazines and coffee table books, and many poetry groups routinely post photo prompts. You'll also find them all over the web. Go to Google or another search engine and type in Random Image. Up will pop at least 4 unrelated images, and at least one should inspire you to write poetry.

Method 11: Reverse Images. This time, once the have the images in front of you, write instead about the opposite, the reverse of the image or the idea it represents. Think about that object, person or idea in a strange or surreal alternative context, where it couldn't possibly comfortably exist. If you see hate, write about love. If you see peace, write about conflict.

We'll explore more experimental poetry methods next time. Keep writing!

Steve Wheeler 

Image from Flickr used under a Creative Commons licence

Previous posts in this series:

Experimental Poetry 1: Found Poetry
Experimental Poetry 2: Stream of Consciousness
Experimental Poetry 3: Fake Translations
Experimental Poetry 4: Overlapping Voices

Experimental Poetry 4: Overlapping Voices

Many poets get into a rut at some point in their lives, and begin to churn out the same old stuff, time after time. You know how it goes... You try to take a different route, but end up reverting to the same old beaten track you've been down so often. You want to write something unique, different, but it ends up just like all your other poetry. It can be very frustrating. How about doing something extraordinarily different to write your poems? Are you up for the challenge? Then read on...

Method 8: Overlapping Voices. Have you ever been at a party, a shopping mall or other social gathering where you stand there and try to listen to all the voices talking simultaneously? This cacophony of sound feels like a waterfall of noise - a sonic wallpaper - and its usual to consign it to the background and focus on your own conversation as you block it out. But what if you listened more closely and tried to discern the things people were discussing all around you? 

Now imagine trying to capture all those words on paper. Transcribing at this level is utterly impossible, but that's the point... If you want some new ideas or lines for your poetry, listen to what's going on around you and try to grab the words. The voices will overlap, the topics will be diverse and the noise will be difficult to penetrate. It will be an absolute mess, but from out of that chaos comes order!  

Another less conspicuous way of doing the same thing is to record the multiple conversations from a party or a visit to your local coffee shop, or listen to several recordings simultaneously (e.g. Radio or TV news) and try to grab the words you hear from the hubbub of voices. The idea behind this method is that you either hear words or phrases you can capture, or you will imagine you hear those words. Either way, it doesn't matter because you'll be creating a new piece, regardless. 

Steve Wheeler

Image from Flickr used under a Creative Commons Licence

Previous posts in this series:

Experimental Poetry 1: Found Poetry
Experimental Poetry 2: Stream of Consciousness
Experimental Poetry 3: Fake Translations

Experimental Poetry 3: Fake Translations

Method 6: Fake Translations

Now here's a really strange idea for you (They will get even stranger, believe me): If you want to break out of a rut you find yourself in - especially if it's about something creative, like writing poetry - try this on for size. Grab hold of some foreign text - it really doesn't matter what the language is, it simply needs to be a language you are not very fluent in. Also, it doesn't really matter what the subject is about, it just needs to be a foreign language text.

Next, sit down and read it, and try to make sense of what is being said. You may recognise a few foreign words and know their translation. Use that as your starting point as you create your latest poem. Try to guess what is being said. It doesn't matter if you're wrong and the translation is false. That is all part of the fun and creativity of trying to create a poem out of a foreign language text. Language is language, and as we all know in poetry, words can be made to mean what we want them to mean. 

Method 7: Foreign End Rhymes

This is even stranger: Using the same kind of foreign language texts, look for words that appear to rhyme. Use them in your end rhymes in the poems you have already written. Replace the end rhymes you already used with the foreign end rhymes. It may not work, but have a go. You may create something unique and mysterious. It may start a whole new trend in poetry writing!

Have a go, try again, and then try again. The more you attempt these false translation techniques, the more they will begin to make some creative sense to you. 

Steve Wheeler

Image from Flickr used under a Creative Commons Licence

Previous posts in this series:

Experimental Poetry 1: Found Poetry
Experimental Poetry 2: Stream of Consciousness

Experimental Poetry 2: Stream of Consciousness

This is the second post in my series on experimental poetry. There are many poets who, down through the ages, have tried to push the boundaries of poetry beyond what is expected, and in some cases, what some might consider acceptable. But poetry, as I will keep saying, has no rules. Look at the work of poets such as Ezra Pound, e e cummings and Edwin Morgan, and you will see this is true. 

One of the ways to break out of a poetic rut is to forget all the rules and techniques you already adhere to when you write (Yeah, I know. It's not easy), and just write freely and without any constraints. 

Method 5: Stream of Consciousness is a technique where you simply write (or speak into a recorder) at random, using whatever comes into your mind. Better still, try writing without even thinking - unconsciously.  Perhaps the results will be unusable or gibberish. It doesn't really matter. You are creating something. Just keep writing and do it very fast. Let your mind run away with you. Sooner or later there will be something that emerges that you could never have created by simply sticking to your tried and tested methods. 

This method might result in some really strange and original poetry, but even if it doesn't, the very act of writing freely without thinking too much will loosen you up as a poet, and allow you to exercise and develop your writing agility. Who knows, it might even make you stand out from the poetic crowd!

Steve Wheeler

Photo from RawPixel used under a Creative Commons Licence

Previous Post

Experimental Poetry 1: Found Poetry

Experimental Poetry 1: Found Poetry

Poetry isn't rocket science. Poetry is about emotions, not about scientific formulae. And yet... and yet.... in poetry there are so many wonderful, weird and wacky techniques, it's very difficult to know about them all, or begin to fathom how you might use them. 

Many poets are happy with the way they write. They stick to their tried and tested styles and techniques and go merrily along their way. But if you're like me, you are constantly looking for new ways to express yourself through your poetry. If you're like me, you're always less than satisfied with the way you write and are always on the lookout for ways to stretch your abilities and skills. 

If you are like me, then this is the blog series you've been looking for. In the next (I don't know how many, I really don't) series of blogs I intend to explore experimental poetry in as many of its many colours as possible. And hopefully, you'll come along with me on that journey and push yourself to your poetic limits. So here's the first experimental technique... it's known as found poetry. I wrote about my own experiments in Found poetry in various blog posts including this one. 

Method 1: Open Books. Open up a few books at random, and lay them all around you. They can be books on any subject, including literature, recipe books, science manuals or magazines. Begin to write, and as you write, keep glancing at random at the open books and grab words, lines or phrases you see, and then incorporate them into your writing. It doesn't need to make any sense. Experiment to see the results.

Method 2: Read Out Loud. Find a magazine or other printed text you can tear up, cut up or otherwise vandalise. Begin reading our words, sentences or phrases at random. Record yourself and then listen back to see what sounds (phonics) have been generated. They don't need to make sense. They just need to make an interesting sound.  

Method 3: Blank Outs. Using the same materials above, blank out with white type correction fluid or colour out with a marker pen, or colour with a highlighter pen at random. Watch to see what patterns of words emerge and incorporate them into your latest poem.

Method 4: Cut Up Poetry. Cut out words, sentences and phrases and glue them onto a blank page and watch to see what patterns emerge, before using them in your latest poem. 

Go for it. There are no rules. Just experimentation and possible masterpieces of random, avant garde writing. 

Steve Wheeler

Photo (cropped) from Wikimedia Commons

A Review Of Kenneth Wheeler’s “Inspirations”

Some food is taken in small bites to really savor the flavors and overall complexities of the dish on the palette. I decided to approach the reading of Kenneth Wheeler’s “Inspirations” in this manner. As a result my hope for humanity was fed with all the earthy substance of a hearty steak to the heavenly light satisfaction of clotted cream on scones with strawberry jam.

Kenneth’s many stories of his experiences in the WWII Plymouth Blitz in England, as well as moving his family about, serving in the Royal Air Force for 32 years, only scratch the surface of the man himself. 

Inspirations covers a substantial amount of spiritual ground as a devotional to the power and redemptive healing hope in the works not only of Jesus Christ, but in ourselves as human beings. The potential reconciliation of our spiritual and our earthly existence is put into perspective in poems such as That Night In Gethsemane, Promises, and Dumping Ground. 

These works challenge typical devotions with a most direct yet immensely beautiful poetic approach that is both entertaining and… well… inspirational! This is a book that lives and breathes with every poem!

In Minute By Minute he writes “… it’s what we do with each and every precious moment, once that moment is gone, we can’t recall it, or reuse it. We can’t live again, so what are we doing with all of those precious moments?” He points out half our lives are spent in bed, and the rest is there to draw upon the righteous word of God in order to shine that light for others to see and share.

Kenneth’s voice also spans immensely vivid portraits of his childhood in Plymouth, where locals are known as Janners. He says so much with so little about his beloved late wife in Ascent Love and A Tribute To My Beautiful Ruth with lines like “In my mind I still see your sweet face, The beauty that captured my soul, your hair so perfect, arranged with great care, led me to levels unknown”. This is the heart of a poet!

The gratitude of a humbled human soul steeped in the righteousness and divine commission of the teachings of Jesus Christ permeates every poem of “Inspirations”. It literally boosts the reader up with the hope that there is more to be seen than unseen, as well as so much to be achieved with living a life dedicated in the service of The Lord, family, and the overall world in general.

“Inspirations” takes devotional books to the next level in many ways,  from the appreciation of the NHS (Thursday Night) to cultural commonalities  (There Are No Borders). His poetic pen weaves many a captivating story in poetic prose, always coming back to his unwavering victory through an undying faith.

I’m honored to have been able to review this book. Although I have not talked to Kenneth personally, I have read and admired his poems from afar for some time now. I’m glad his son Steve got him an iPad during Covid… the catalyst for the creation to this book!

I highly recommend Inspirations, not only for it’s delightfully poignant and relatable stories, but for the vast spiritual smorgasbord it provides to manifest hope. It serves a never ending plate of heavenly poetry that keeps the reader coming back for seconds every time. 

Matt Elmore