Saturday, February 21, 2009

End of Part 3

Well, I've come to the end of Part 3 of The Big Red Book - the poetry section - and I've now got this week to fine-tune the poems I've written for my TMA 03.

All-in-all, I've enjoyed this section, although not as much as I'd hoped to. I think that's probably due to the fact that I wasn't keen on the style of the author of this section, one W. N. Herbert who, while he may be an award-winning poet, has much to be desired, for me, as a teacher of poetic creativity.

I have to confess to being quite exasperated by his style throughout most of the section but, while, to be fair to him, he got across what he wished to teach, he did it in such a way that I was gritting my teeth throughout!

I had the feeling that, with every word written, he had subconsciously, maybe, put in just how great a poet he was, but I have actually learnt a lot more about the processes of creating poetry from a book that was recommended to me by a previous student of this course: Stephen Fry's An Ode Less Travelled. In this book, the learning process was put forward with humour and grace, and a slightly self-denigrating mode that, frankly, was a lot easier to swallow than W. N. Herbert's more, 'Look at me, aren't I clever!' style.

Despite all of this, however, I was introduced to a variety of ways that could stimulate my creative processes and, although there were one or two I hated with all the passion in me, they did get the juices flowing, and so did what it said it on the label - got me to write poetry in a more expanded way than I have done so previously, and also got me able to be more self-critical of my work!

The next section we will be working on, after my poems are finally submitted, is Life Writing.
I'm still not quite sure what this will involve totally, but I guess we will be exploring our own, and other people's lives, and the reasons behind why some people feel the need to express aspects of their lives in print. We shall see!
Anyway, after I've submitted my poems, and have had the result back (I'm not hopeful of the same sort of results as my last TMA in this!), then I will post my efforts for all to read and laugh at!



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