Thursday, April 30, 2009

Bill Manhire inspires great and disastrous attempts at higher art


It's only 9.30 but I can tell nothing is happening today. Bill Manhire talked to us yesterday and I was inspired by a lot of what he said, but this morning I tried to write something using 'another' text like he seems to be fond of doing, historical things, other non-poetry type things. Research I suppose. So I tried that and I don't think it is for me. I wrote something 'inspired' by The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (1990, Dover Publications. ISBN: 0-486-26464-5).

Fucken hell. Bill mentioned several times that we need to change the source material intention to make it a poem otherwise what is the point, which is of course easier said than done. I guess it helps if you bring something else to it, like Bill seems quite fond of making other works into metaphors for writing like the Lightning poem. I guess I'm saying I didn't do that. Maybe I'm not at that stage yet. H.O.D. does have quite a weird, dark, imposing tone, so maybe that doesn't help if you are trying to help it escape itself into something else?

I also went heavy with the rhyme which Bill inspired too (he showed us a couple of new things which were sensational!). Although I've started geting into that a bit on my own. Such a tricky one.

In other news, I read a couple more Palmer (I really, really want to spell his name Psalmer. Is that wrong?). Anyway today is another write off, but I haven't had too many of those so far, so that's OK. I just feel weird, disconnected or something. Don't know why.

Sayonara.

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