Our guest today is Audrey Chin, a published novelist and one of our own readers, who's here to tell us something about how she writes poetry. Audrey lives in Singapore where she has published two novels. To read some of her poetry visit Audrey's blog. I hope you enjoy her post!

I consider my poetry intermezzo, what I do to “practice” when I’m blocked on my novel. It's a simple process. I string words together, looking and listening as I go. When everything more or less fits, I stop.

I look and listen for strings of words that resonate with meaning in the same way Chinese ideographs or picture-words do. For example, in old Chinese, the ideograph for family is written as swine under a roof. In the simplified ideographs used in mainland China today, the ideograph is a combination of “strength” on the left and a mouth on the right both under a roof. How’s that for cultural referencing?!

Chinese Characters

Photo by Kevin Dooley

In terms of sound—the Chinese word for family sounds like the word for “increase”, it is one tone lighter than the sound for “marriage”. How many layers of meaning is that?!

Although English isn’t a pictorial language, the same principles apply.

An Example of a Word-Picture

This morning, I happened to walk under a butterfly tree in full flower. When I stopped for a sniff, I was disappointed to find the plant is scentless. It’s an overdressed bimbo, I thought; except that I didn’t want to create a word picture about bimbos or clothes. I’d to find a correct word to hang my disappointment on. Scent, smell, perfume…essence!

Essence had the correct sound too, starting with a light drawing in and then a hissy disappointed out, exactly the same way I felt sniffing the flower.

“A butterfly tree has no essence,” one picture-perfect string of words done, one word-picture.

When Is Your Poem Finished?

That one word-picture took half a day forming in my mind. Tonight, when I’m done working on the paragraphs I’ve “budgeted” for my novel, I may go back to look at it. I might add another line or two. I don’t push it. I’m never sure how many more word-pictures it will take to finish what I want to say. I don’t let that hassle me.

My poems are intermezzo, my playtime. Personally, I don’t think poetry can be written in a hurry anyway.

I’ll know I’m done when it’s done. A bit vague, this. But when do you stop eating? When you’re full. It’s just a feeling in the gut.

After which, I leave the poems to sit for a while, so I can get some distance. From time to time, I go back and give them another look, take a few words out, add some back. Mouth them in my mind, to hear if that’s how I want them to sound. Sometimes I shift lines or break them up in different places. And then, I leave them be.

PRACTICE

Practice forming your own “word-pictures.” Look around where you're sitting for images to convey, or think of images you came across today. See if you can come up with a short poem of word-pictures.

Try it out for fifteen minutes, and when you're finished, share what you've written in the comments. Good luck!

Joe Bunting is an author and the leader of The Write Practice community. He is also the author of the new book Crowdsourcing Paris, a real life adventure story set in France. It was a #1 New Release on Amazon. Follow him on Instagram (@jhbunting).

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