“Listen” is always a central element of the advice I offer to writers. If you want your writing to improve, you have to listen to it more consciously, then listen to it more effectively. So it’s an essential aspect of my courses that people write and then read their writing aloud. Only then do you really start to pay attention to the questions of rhythm, vocabulary and structure that underpin the meaning of your words.
This was reinforced for me yet again by my latest Dark Angels course. Last week Stuart Delves and I gathered a group at a house called Toftcombs in the Scottish Borders. People came from surprisingly far-flung places, including Singapore, Stockholm and Paris. And a transformation happened as usual, with people writing with increasing freedom, feeling and confidence by the end of the three intensive days. www.dark-angels.org.uk
We had invited the poet Jen Hadfield to read on the second evening, and she helped us all to listen so much more intently. Jen lives in the Shetlands and has just won the TS Eliot Prize for her collection Nigh-No-Place. She read her poems with a mesmeric, lilting rhythm, her gently accented voice giving her poetry the echo of liturgy.
I go to the rockpool at the slack of the tide
to mind me what my poetry’s for.
Listening to poetry gives it a dimension that is interestingly different from simply reading poetry.
Here’s a wonderful resource, perhaps the best legacy of the just-retired poet laureate Andrew Motion. http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/home.do Visit the poetry archive, dip into the work of a different poet every day. Listen to the voice.
Martin Lee writes
The Poetry Archive. What a resource! I headed straight for Hugh McDiarmid – I’ve always wanted to hear his poems read properly and I wasn’t disappointed. Astonishing.