Poetry From Adversity

When I was published recently by Wheelsong Books, many of my family and friends tended to mock my work without even reading it. I was stereotyped as a soft tulip tiptoer that whimsically wrote words at the sight of the first butterfly.

This IS somewhat true! Not the first butterfly though.… I live in the country, so I see them every day…

They didn’t know this about me. I’ve always been a bit of a tough guy… built sheds and furniture and picnic tables. Hung out with rowdies and sang in a metal band. Hiked half the Appalachian trail in a shot. Drank beers in honky tonks and flirted with pretty women. A biker gang even named me “Chains”… long story, trust me!

A poet?! Really?

Yeah… really. 

However, when they read a few of my poems, I believe they began to understand what I was doing. Poets wear many hats… Some even congratulated me, which was another milestone for me. They accepted that I represent more than an average everyday person. A balance of the light and heavy…

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I’m just an average everyday person that is able to articulate what most average everyday people are feeling and want to say. I think this defines many modern poets.

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Poetry is about more than rainbows and butterflies. It’s not all the Robert Frost kind of nature trip… or even the Robert Browning sort of introspections. It’s not all John Milton inspired perfectly metered verse, or the angular intricate constructions  of E.E. Cummings. It’s not even even all the dark art poetry that permeates today’s social media, accentuating carnal sides of our natures… the flip side to NICE poetry.

Many poets have a default muse they draw upon. They may try different styles, but there is something at the marrow that fuels their art. For me, that is adversity. This adverse misunderstanding bothered me… but only motivated me to write even more.

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Troubles tend to drive me into my best works, often obfuscated in various concluding themes of redemption, despair, or despondency. This tension rocked me a number of times… and perhaps even guided the pen to what some consider my best work “The Colored Number Of My Counted Days”, published in my book Constellation Road.

I recently moved my 83 year old mother in with me to watch after her. She suffered what appears to be a minor stroke a couple of days ago and hasn’t been the same since. I’m sick with worry right now., worried about her at my house when I’m at work. Something in her eyes has dulled. Yet I meet the adversity with courage and keep on… Strangely, I haven’t really written a poem about this. Afraid to I guess. Don’t know why…

I do know that when harnessed properly, this tension that is created through adversity can be refined in passion to create something special. My best work is ahead of me I know. It doesn’t make it any easier knowing hard times are coming…

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Does adversity move you as a poet? Or do you compartmentalize your problems… and focus on other aspects of life? If you are moved by the troubles, is it therapeutic? Or is it just another theme to go off of?

Please feel free to comment on this article. I know it is a bit more personal than the usual poetry blog, but writing is what we do, and this topic is becoming nearer to my heart than I ever thought it could before.

Thanks for reading!

Matt Elmore

Wheelsong Poetry Anthology 3

Wheelsong Books was first established in 2020 as a not-for-profit organisation. Its mission statement is twofold: To give emerging poets platforms to reach larger audiences and to help those who are in need. Since then, the company has published 30 books including four charity poetry anthologies.  These are the anthology statistics: 

Absolutely Poetry Anthology 1 contains 170 poems 

Absolutely Poetry Anthology 2: 176 poems 

Wheelsong Poetry Anthology 1: 183 poems 

Wheelsong Poetry Anthology 2: 214 poems 

(a total of 743 poems by more than 250 poets representing over 80 countries across all 6 continents) 

All the above books will remain on sale on Amazon and through other outlets, including Waterstones (UK) and Barnes & Noble (USA). The proceeds from Amazon sales of these four books is donated to Save the Children - a worldwide charity that supports children in crisis. To date Wheelsong Books has donated more than £1300.00 ($1650.00) to Save the Children and we intend to raise a lot more money. We are about to launch Wheelsong Poetry Anthology 3!

Poet, here's the deal.... You have been given a wonderful creative gift, which is to be able to articulate your thoughts, ideas, memories and emotions in beautiful, evocative words. Using your talent, you can give back a little to children who are in desperate, often life-threatening situations. We all want our poetry to be read and appreciated by others. Publishing your work in Wheelsong Poetry Anthology 3 will ensure you gain a new audience for your poetry, but more importantly, your poems will be raising much needed funds to support children in crisis. 

To be considered for inclusion you will need to: 

1) submit up to 3 of your own original poems for review, that have not previously been subject to any publishing agreement. (Plagiarised, AI generated and publisher contracted poems will not be considered) 

2) email your poems in either plain text or Word format so the team are able to transfer your poetry across into the editorial review system. The email will be announced in the Call for Poems post (see below). 

3) pledge that you will purchase at least one copy of the book (at author discount, which will be half the price advertised on Amazon, plus shipping) to support the project. The editors noticed that less than third of the poets published in previous anthologies actually supported the project and bought a copy once the books had been published! We think that is unfair, and we will now only publish poets who are committed to helping others. In your publishing agreement there will be a pledge for to to sign to agree to this clause. Please don't submit your poetry if you are unwilling to do this. 

NB: Shorter poems are more likely to be accepted for publication than longer pieces - space will be limited in the book due to resource and production limitations. 

For now, don't send any poems in. They won't be seen. More details are coming about important dates and deadlines and how to submit. 

Look out for the call for poems, which will be posted on several Facebook poetry groups including Invisible Poets, Wheelsong Poetry and Pure Poetry later in August. Keep visiting this blog to find out more. 

Steve Wheeler, Editor in Chief

Photo © 2023 Wheelsong Books

Writing Collaborative Poetry

Isn’t it nice to have a friend to call when things get rough? Is it not good just to vent thoughts and having some kind of validation as to what you are thinking…? Maybe even better to have someone put things into a perspective you never thought of before to form a broad enough conclusion ..? 

This metaphor presents an overwhelming aspect of collaborating poetry with other like minded poets. 

Just as when you are calling on a friend with a conversation to talk about a subject… a collaborative poem draws two expressions together about a subject for one final absolute conclusion!

This happened to two friends in Somerset in 1795. Poets  Samuel Taylor Coleridge  and William Wordsworth got to be great buddies. Samuel even moved closer to William in Grasmere to be able to talk poetry and swap ideas. Now that’s friendship! The culmination of their collaborative book entitled “Lyrical Ballads” started what many thought to be the beginning of the Romantic Era 

Even more than that,.. their collaboration came to involve the talented Robert Southerly, among others. These came to be known as the “Lake Poets”, named for the Lakelands of Northwest England. Their like minded aspirations matched their introspective ideas of love and nature in an almost conversational delivery well worth reading.

The idea of stepping off of a narrow path onto a multi-laned freeway of ideas reduces a one sided direction. It inspires poets to yield to many more opportunities to accelerate into the passing lanes of new perspectives.

Poet  Jen Hofer also adds a great point in on article on collaborations from the Poetry Foundation,  “ … collaborative processes create conflicts, frictions, difficulties, and discomforts that wouldn't exist if I were working alone. Moving through those challenges is as crucial an element of the work as whatever legible "products" the work produces.” 

Conflicts of ideas can often have the most obscure positive effects on the final draft of a collaborative poem.

Surrealist French poets Andre Breton , Paul Eulard , and Rene Charl  wrote a line by line publication over five days in 1930 game referred to as the “Exquisite Courpse ”, a collage of intense words and images. My colleagues and I wrote our own version of the “Exquisite Courpse” in my last year as an editor of our school literary magazine at Western Illinois University. The “game” turned out so prolific, I decided to publish it exactly as it was. An honest poignant collaboration between friends.

Poets are not hermits, as many would seem to imply with the stereotype (though some do prefer to be alone). Poets are people, and people at some time have to communicate. Collaborations are a wonderful way to take an interesting conversation and turn it into art.

I invite you to comment on this article with whatever feelings or experiences you may have had as an artist with collaborations. Thank you for reading!

Matt Elmore

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_poetry

https://sites.udel.edu/britlitwiki/coleridge-and-wordsworth/

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet-books/2014/03/on-collaboration

To Rhyme Or Not To Rhyme

To rhyme or not to rhyme that is the question… to suffer poetic arrows of lines too narrow… ok,… I’ll stop!

Anyone familiar with my work knows that I am an ardent addict of anything that has to do with assonance or internal rhyme. If I could feed bleeds of rhyme intravenously I’d have an English lit drip right here on my desk!

However… Steve Wheeler put it best in his last blog to refine, define, and stretch your skills as a poet by stepping out of your box into that big wide world of what for and try something new. He illustrated a sweet timeline of historic writing styles to draw from. Howeever, this article is not about semantics. I’ll leave that to the experts! This is about the “world of what for”…

Too much rhyming can get rather absurd, obtuse, and downright annoying. Just like Dr Suess or a crazy tongue twister…. not many people enjoy poems about silly Sammy slurping down slushies by the seashore… are flavored ice drinks called slushies outside of the United States?! Just curious…

Anyway, I’ve fell prey to this so many times I’ve made paper airplanes out of my supposed masterpieces just to see how far they would go! Usually, they would nose dive before they even made the open window… they were SO HEAVY with rhymes.

I’ve come to find that rhyming is much like cooking… you tend to pepper your dish to taste, not just douse it on there! Many simple quatrains or octave stanzas are of the ABAB or AABB or ABBA variety, which is conservative enough. 

Yet when you mix those forms with internal rhyming, or setting words that rhyme continuously next to each other… that’s a whole different beast.

It can slap you out a beautiful word salad,, with nothing but limp lettuce. No crunchies in there to provide zest, no veggie messages, nothing nutritious… just a blubbering politician on a same old stump speech bobbling right down the middle of the road. Boringsville. Nothing burger.

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However… with a proper method, incorporating little clever wordplay and a calculated flow, internal rhymes can be incredible…! Consider these zingers by our very own Steve Wheeler in an exert of his poem entitled “I Poet”…

I wright fiction 

I write suction 

I kick up a ruction 

I cause friction 

with my diction 

it's poetic abduction. 

I create propaganda 

proper scandal and banter

like a candid backhander 

to the casual bystander. 

I'll write ya more slander 

than you'll care to handle 

so just take a gander

at the verses I land ya.

You can't hold a candle 

to the substantial anvil 

of my written write-angle

I'm a pen wielding vandal. 

Steve Wheeler © 21 June, 2023

Clever wordplay, eh?! An inspiration to rhymes everywhere, Steve can really kick out the jams when it comes to internal rhyming, making it enjoyable, smooth, and cognitively assessable all the the same time.

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On the flip side of this confederate coin, dissonance in poems works as well, making the words work against themselves to create a feeling of disorder and anarchy. This can really  sculpt themes relating to madness, war, confusion or even death. I offer a few lines from one of my own as an example here entitled “Evocative Dissonance”..

innocents bombed without remorse dissonant explosions! 

political analytical meat for a course; collateral damage to the eyes

of buildings once filled with laughter and cheer insidious incredulous explosions!

now desolation mutilated tombs of fear-castigated with impunity 

trespassing outlasting suppression of loss for fumigant transference of misery

pushing on for survival no matter the cost… oh, maleficent malignancy 

missiles like thistles ripping into the air those sequentially random aneurisms 

bemoaning homes in hopes of someone is there creating fractures inequitable 

©️Matthew Elmore 

Ok… so I threw a few of my trademark rhymes in there! I told you,… it’s an addiction!! So this is not a true example of dissonance. However, notice how some words work against each other… “remorse/dissonant explosions” “fractures/inequitable”… nothing fits here … except they compliment each other in a strange way. Funny… there were NO RHYMES in this originally… I had to sprinkle a few bits of assonance and rhymes the piece was so corse. Too corse! Yet that, of course, is just a matter of taste. I prefer a spoonful of sugar with such a bitter subject.

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Some poems do not use rhymes at all to get a point across. Take this piece of a poem out of my recently published book Constellation Road called “Rumors Of Wars”…

snarling fires burn wicked tounges unclean

such miscommunications lead to world wars

launch enervating embers in unknowing eyes

destitute of delight to negotiate indignation

situated in instability floating on despair 

©️ Matthew Elmore

Nothing about that rhymes. But it works somehow.

 

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Whether or not rhyming works for you is really just a matter of style. I love it! Rhyming sings to me like music. Yet music is known to have its random crescendos, blurps and bleeps as well. That is what makes this world interesting… because if it were all the same,… how boring would that be? Try it sometime! Vive la difference! 

Please feel free to leave your comments below. I always appreciate hearing from you! Write on poet…

Matt Elmore