If you boil emotions down to the absolute fundamentals, you end up with love and hate. I’m always encouraging people in my workshops to put more emotion into their writing, so this probably means asking people to reveal more of what they really love and hate when they’re writing for, say, a brewery (“don’t mind if I do”) or a bank “don’t get me started”).
But even these most fundamental of emotions are actually full of nuances. It rarely comes down to a sigh of orgasmic pleasure or a shriek of uncontrollable outrage. We’re subtler creatures than that and it’s the subtlety that becomes interesting.
Many years ago I started using a wonderful poem by Roger McGough in workshops. The poem is called “In two minds”. Its first line is “What I love about night is the silver certainty of its stars”. The second line picks up the last word and begins “What I hate about stars…” The poem bats backwards and forwards between love and hate until it ends, a dozen or so lines later, with “What I hate about night is the silver certainty of its stars”. There’s a satisfying circularity about it, a pleasing sense of completion.
Jen Hadfield, the poet who has just won the TS Eliot Prize, gave us a variant of this form at my last Dark Angels course in Scotland in May. This version focuses on love – love of writing and talking. Jen stated her inspiration as Edwin Morgan so this seems a poetic form with many different sources. Jen led the group of a dozen people through the creation of a collaborative poem in about 15 minutes. I show the result below.
A month has passed and the wonderful thing now is that I can’t remember who wrote which lines. I can’t even remember which lines I wrote. And it doesn’t matter. The poem has a rhythm and humanity that is universal. Every time I read it, different lines appeal that perhaps I had not noticed on the previous reading.
This suggests to me that the poem could be extended further. Other people might wish to add their own couplets about writing and talking. What do you love about writing? Or perhaps hate?
The Toftcombs Dark Angels wrote:
what I love about writing is the &
what I love about talking is no-one can tell I can’t spell
what I love about writing is the sound of the pen scratching the paper
what I love about talking is the…silences which speak volumes
what I like about writing is the ability to stealth-bomb
what I like about talking is the opportunity to hear yourself
what I love about writing is the shape of the words
what I love about talking is the sound of the words
what I love about writing is the absence of sound
what I love about talking is the presence of sound
what I love about writing is thinking out quietly
what I love about talking is phosphorus and flint
what I love about writing is its dendrites
what I love about talking is you you and you
what I love about writing is the anticipation
what I love about talking is the inevitability
what I like about writing is I say what I mean
what I like about talking is people know what I mean
what I love about writing is what I find
what I love about talking is your thoughts
what I love about writing is it lies
what I love about talking is it flows
what I love about writing is its deep sea
what I love about talking is its tides
what I love about writing is its crusty edge
what I love about talking is its underbelly
What I love about writing is the inwardness
What I love about talking is the outwardness
What I love about listening is the inwardness
What I love about writing is its multiplicity of meaning
What I love about talking is hearing what’s unsaid
What I like about writing is a carefully crafted balance
What I like about talking is an unpredictable rebelliousness that refuses to be restrained
What I hate about writing is the time-worn lines of concentration
What I hate about talking is its immature thoughtlessness
What I like about writing is its many schizophrenic masks
What I like about talking is that it doesn’t wear make-up
What I love about writing is the mysterious depth of me
What I love about talking is my emotional now
What I love about writing is the chance to edit
What I love about talking is the immediacy
What I love about writing is reading
What I love about talking is listening
What I love about writing is the search for perfection
What I love about talking is the constant imperfection
What i love about writing is seeing what I’m thinking about.
What i love about talking is waving my arms about.