Journalists

Full-time journalists can expect to earn a living wage, averaging around £24,000 a year. For a discussion of how salaries may increase over your career visit the Graduate Prospects website. Freelance journalists are likely to earn considerably less and £12,000 a year or below is fairly common (although higher earners do exist). However, what you lose in money you gain in time and freedom. For details of what freelance journalists in the UK can earn, please visit the National Union of Journalists website. Be aware however that employers are not compelled to pay these fees and that smaller media companies, where you are likely to get your first paying work, frequently pay less.

Prose writers

For more creative writing  the average annual earnings from writing alone is around £5,000. This includes average royalties from published novels and PLR fees (a small percentage you get when someone takes your book out of the library) and fees for published short stories. Most writers have to supplement their earnings with other jobs. The most common include teaching, lecturing and leading creative writing workshops. But any job will do as long as it is flexible and gives you time to write. A friend of mine has just taken on a job as a dish washer in a cafe’ while he finishes his novel. Another writer I know is a street sweeper. He says the early morning rides on his sweeping machine give him lots of creative thinking time. For a realistic overview of what creative writers can earn, visit the careers advice website. If the thought of earning so little from your writing horrifies you, then perhaps this is not the right career for you. Most creative writers write because they love to and getting paid is simply a bonus.

Scriptwriters

Writing for stage, radio, TV and film can potentially bring in more money than prose writing, but professional commissions are few and far between and it is very hard to get your first break. Earnings start at around £6,000 for a full-length stage play (which could take you quite a few years to write, get commissioned, developed and produced) up to around £40,000 for a full-length feature film script that actually gets produced (you only get the full fee if the film gets finished; many don’t). This fee is for feature films with a total budget of over £2 million. Films with a budget of less than that will pay less to the writer. For further details of agreed rates for scriptwriters, see the Writers’ Guild website. Again, most scriptwriters have to take on additional work to keep them above the bread line.

Poets

I have never tried to earn money from my poetry. The reasons are two-fold: firstly, I don’t write enough poetry to make it a serious career choice and secondly, because I know that it’s the most poorly paid of all writing ‘jobs’. Even more than prose writers, poets do it for the love of words not the love of money. Many poetry presses simply give the poet some books to sell themselves.  For a discussion on poetry and pay visit Empty Mirror Books. Poets can earn a little by giving workshops and entering competitions for cash prizes. But the poetry itself, even if published, earns them next to nothing.

Self-publishing

I can guarantee that as soon as I publish this post I will be inundated with adverts and comments about people earning mega-bucks from self-publishing their own books or co-publishing (splitting the cost of production with the publisher). This is not as wonderful as it sounds and while a few people may make the big time, most people do not. For a fuller discussion of this topic, check out the pros and cons of co-publishing.

For a very interesting discussion around what writers earn that attracted writers from all over the web and a bit of a bun fight visit Can you earn money as a writer?

Related posts:

1. Can you earn money as a writer?
2. Do you want to write full time?
3. Beginner Blogging for Writers: part 3

The company needs to sell roughly £45,000 worth of books to keep afloat for the rest of the year. Publishing director Chris Hamilton-Emery said the company had not wanted to repeat the initiative “because we thought it was unrepeatable, but we have just reached crunch time this week”. He added: “We realised if we didn’t get some sales, we would probably go bust very shortly.”

Hamilton-Emery said a number of factors had contributed to Salt’s financial woes, including the recession, the World Cup and the demise of Borders UK late last year. “They were a good customer of ours, so that was a real blow,” he said.

The Crafty Writer’s guest poetry tutor, Andrew Philip, is published by Salt.  He says:  “It’s harder and harder these days for authors – début authors and mid-listers in particular – to find publishers. The big houses are taking on fewer writers and concentrating their marketing power on certain titles in their lists. So writers need publishers such as Salt more than ever. Publishers who don’t simply bend to the howling winds of celebrity memoirs. Publishers who will take a risk on writing they simply believe in. Publishers who believe in you and give readers the chance to let your voice enter their hearts and minds. If Salt goes, we all lose.”

Writers and book lovers are being asked to buy just one book to help save Salt, Andy recommends:

• Short Circuit: A Guide to the Art of the Short Story, ed. Vanessa Gebbie
• The White Road and Other Stories by Tania Hershman: wonderful science-inspired short and flash fiction (read an interview with Tania on Andy’s blog)
• The Opposite of Cabbage by Rob A Mackenzie: lively, imaginative, inventive new poetry from Scotland
• Off Road to Everywhere by Philip Gross: children’s poetry from the recent TS Eliot prize winner
• Lions in Winter by Wena Poon: vivid, engaging stories that capture the true urban sophistication of New Asia

Related posts:

1. The Ambulance Box – getting your poetry in print
2. Independent publishers – an author’s perspective
3. What do writers earn?

“I’m pretty much easy on subjects:  funny, light-hearted, twist-in-the-tale, thought provoking, crime, sci-fi, things along those lines. Nothing dark, heavy of graphically hideous! As for poets, as long as the poem fits on an A4 sheet, it should be fine,” says Vivienne. Unfortunately, they don’t accept writing for children at this time

There is a print and electronic version of the magazine which comes out bi-monthly. It’s published in the UK but accepts submissions from abroad. There is no payment for publication, but if you would like to showcase your writing, this may be an outlet for you.  Good luck!

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2. Magazine ‘lead times’
3. Non-fiction market opportunities

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RG: When I began writing, many of the poems were based on my background, growing up in a village in Co.Tyrone, N.Ireland. As I developed as a writer the themes widened to encompass ‘literary greats’ of the 19th and 20th centuries. The majority of poems conveniently fell within these two categories when thinking of publishing a collection.

TCW: What first attracted you to the theme?

RG: As a Christian I specifically targeted writers who have a Christian or spiritual dimension within their work or lives. I was interested to find out how they lived, as a kind of parallel with my own life.

TCW: How did you go about selecting the title? While it certainly alludes to the ‘literary’ nature of the poems, it suggests a volume of love stories, which isn’t the case. Do you think readers might be misled by this? And if so, does it matter from a marketing perspective? 

RG: It took a long time to finally decide on a title. A friend read through the collection and suggested that the literary lives were the ‘strongest selling point’ of the collection, and advised beginning with these poems. As the Tolstoy poems predominate within the first section, it seemed logical to choose a title containing the name.  Some people might be misled by the title, but I felt that many readers will be  attuned to the idea that a poem from a collection, used as a title, may not necessarily be representative of the whole collection.

TCW: Did you consciously play on a reference to Shakespeare in Love?

RG: No, but one or two people referred to the Shakespeare connection when I had published the work.

TCW: For me the most satisfying thing in reading this volume was the way you get right into the skin of your characters. Do you have any tips on how developing poets can do this?

RG: A very helpful book is Writing Poems, by Peter Sansom. It includes a number of useful exercises which get the reader to examine a subject from varying points-of-view. [I can also recommend this book - Ed]
 
TCW: I loved the way you play with point of view, shifting between subject and viewer. In ‘Tolstoy in Love’, for instance, the great man tells us of his love for Sonya. Then in the next poem, ‘Sonya Tolstoy’, you shift to her POV which is very different from that of her husband’s. We then feel compelled to re-read the first poem in light of the second. Is writing from a poetic character’s point of view something that has always marked your work or is it distinctive to this collection? What interests you in playing with POV?

RG: For many years I used to write only from my own perspective. However, on finding the possibility of writing from other viewpoints, I was able to write through Tolstoy’s voice, his wife’s or other characters. This can, if successful, give a multi-layered picture of the main character, his strengths and flaws, his inconsistencies.
 
TCW: When changing POV you also change the ‘voice’ of the poem. Could you explain to new writers what an editor means when they refer to ‘voice’?

RG: I suppose each person has a unique voice, but there are certain characteristics which we have in common with other people, background, job etc. A medical doctor, for example, has to sound authentic, particularly if you place him in a medical situation. You don’t need a doctorate in medicine to get the voice right, but it does require some background reading and research if you propose to speak in his voice.  

TCW: The second section of this collection is entitled ‘An Emotional Map of Belfast’ and while similar in style is very different in subject – your personal reflections on your own life and relationships in Northern Ireland. In a sense you become the ‘writer’ as subject and viewer. Why did you decide to have what John Wakeman describes as ‘two books for the price of one, both worth having.’? Did you ever consider that they should be separate collections and whether or not readers would feel the two should not be together?

RG: I suppose I could have waited and developed the work into two separate collections. However, as I was trying to get a full collection accepted for thirteen years, this did not seem an option. Writing about characters, at a distance, in the first section, perhaps allowed me to address the reader through my own voice in the second section.
 
TCW: You started gaining attention as a poet through winning competitions. How important are compeitition wins? Should new writers enter them? Can you recommend some competitions to Crafty readers?

RG: The winning, or in most cases, being short-listed or commended in a poetry competition can help to promote your name in writing circles, but I would always look to see the judge of the competition. Is he a recognised poet whose judgements you can respect? For example, last year I entered a relatively small competition held in Wells, because the judge was Andrew Motion, the Poet Laureate at that time.

I think new writers might try small or local competitions first, but the small press magazine is a better option at the start to help build a good CV of publishing credits to eventually work towards being published in pamphlet or book form.

The new writer is probably best advised to steer clear of poetry competitions which offer prizes such as £5,000 to the winner. An example would be the annual National Poetry Competition, organized by the Poetry Society. As it attracts upwards of 10,000 entries, many by established poets, your chances are virtually zero. (You might be better putting the exorbitant entry fee on the 3:30 at Wincanton!)

There are dozens of competitions each year, some specialist (focused on a particular form or line length) or perhaps on a theme. It might be best to research these and see if your poems fulfil the criteria, such as ‘poems under 30 lines’. Two of the best online guides to competitions (and poetry magazines) are: The Poetry Kit and The Poetry Library.

TCW: Thanks Ray. We wish you well with the sale of your book and strength to your pen for the next collection.

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1. The Ambulance Box – getting your poetry in print
2. Atrocious teenage poetry
3. Poetry: are you listening carefully?

Lullaby

this is the arm that held you
this is the hand that cradled your cold feet

these are the ears that heard you
whimper and cough throughout your brush with light

this is the chest that warmed you
these are the eyes that caught your glimpse of life

this is the man you fathered —
his voided love, his writhen pride and grief

(By Andrew Philip, reproduced with permission.)

TCW: The Ambulance Box is a very personal collection of poetry, largely in response to the death of your first child. Many people write poetry to help them psychologically ‘process’ their lives. What is it that separates a poem that is purely personal to one that is fit (dare I use the word) to enter the public domain?

AP: Craft. And the indefinable something that brings the language alive. The quality of the poem as a poem – however you measure that – must be paramount. Even if that isn’t the case at the outset, it must become the case at some point in the drafting process. In fact, if there is a drafting process, it probably means you’re thinking more poetically than therapeutically as it is.

That’s not to decry the value of writing as therapy. The poems about Aidan were certainly part of my grief work, and I was always conscious that they might not make the grade for publication. I assumed nothing in that respect, but it was probably impossible for me not to work on them as I would any other poems. I was relieved and delighted when it transpired that other people found them worth hearing and reading.

TCW: But The Ambulance Box is not just about grief. What criteria did you use to select poetry for this collection?

AP: First and foremost, I wanted to include my best work, but that’s not necessarily easy to define. I took account of what was best in the opinion of people I respect, but it had to come down to my instinct in the end. Thematic considerations came after that and influenced the order rather than the content.

TCW: Did your editor at Salt Publishing influence the final ‘cut’?

AP: No. I’d spent a considerable amount of time polishing up the manuscript before I submitted it. My friend Rob A Mackenzie was putting together a collection at around the same time. We swapped manuscripts, as readers of my blog will know well. That was extremely helpful. Chris Hamilton-Emery, my editor at Salt, made no changes. In fact, when he accepted the book he said, “There are no duds.” Chris tends to be a pretty hands-off editor anyway, but his comment was very gratifying, as you can imagine!

TCW: Are there any poems you regret didn’t go in?

AP: Not really. Some good poems from Tonguefire, my first pamphlet, didn’t go in because they didn’t seem to be quite good enough or to fit with the rest of the work in the book. If any of those had been top-drawer pieces, I would have found space for them. I also like the fact that people who own the pamphlet – which is sold out – still have something more worth reading in its own right.

TCW: About a third of the collection is written in Scots. [a tip to Crafty readers: if you read it out loud, you can just about understand it in English with a Scots accent! - Ed]. What marketing challenges does this raise when targeting an international readership.

AP: This is a funny one, because non-Scots speakers sometimes like the Scots poems best. It could actually be a marketing advantage because it helps to distinguish the work from other poetry coming out of Britain, even out of Scotland. The Scots diaspora is considerable, after all. The overseas market for things Scottish is generally interested in writing in Scots.

Writing in Scots is quite widely accepted in the UK poetry scene now. Some of the best-known Scottish names in the generation above mine – WN Herbert, Robert Crawford and Kathleen Jamie, for instance – have written work in Scots. Even John Burnside has turned his hand to it for a recent anthology, New Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect.

TCW: Would you ever bring out an entirely Scots / Gaelic collection?

AP: It’s unlikely I’d ever publish an entirely Gaelic collection, simply because I doubt whether I’ll ever reach the fluency necessary to write a book entirely in Gaelic. I’m more interested in bringing the three languages – Gaelic, Scots and English – together in different ways within poems. It seems to me that the aesthetic possibilities of that approach haven’t been fully explored.

That said, I could envisage myself bringing out an entirely Scots book. It just depends on having enough material. That’s something that feels like it’s beyond my control to an extent because it’s a matter of which language the poem wants to be in. For instance, “Berlin/Berlin/Berlin” started out in English but I soon felt that it would work better in Scots. It quickly became clear that that was the case. “Waukrife” and “Coronach”, on the other hand, were in Scots from the earliest drafts.

TCW: In terms of sales, what would constitute a commercial success for your publisher?

AP: It takes 400 sales in the UK over three years for Salt to break even on a book, so I suppose anything above that would be a success. The Ambulance Box is already into its first reprint. The initial run was, I think, 250 hardback copies and the reprint 100, so here’s hoping we hit the magic number!

TCW: Salt Publishing has recently gone public to announce that it is in financial difficulty. It has launched the Just One Book campaign to try and kick-start sales. What impact does this have on you and other new writers?

AP: It’s obviously very worrying. Chris and Jen [the owners - Ed] assured everyone that the backlist was safe, but it looked very much at one point like the frontlist – the books planned for publication for the rest of this year and beyond – would have to be to abandoned. I’m glad to say that they found a way round that.

I’m even more glad to say that they have started commissioning again. However, things are still pretty precarious and the Just One Book campaign continues. Griff Rhys Jones has thrown his weight behind it and my cover, as well as a few others, appeared on screen in Newsnight Review!

TCW: The schools market is obviously the biggest money spinner for poets. How does a poet go about getting into school anthologies?

AP: Good question. How does one get into any anthologies? My only appearance in a school anthology was the Scots-language book The Smoky Smirr O Rain, which came about because I was working with one of its editors – Matthew Fitt – on something else and showed him some of my Rilke translations. He also suggested me for 5PX2: Five Italian Poets and Five Scottish Poets. So I suppose the answer is that you have to be known to whoever is editing an anthology. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to know them, but it obviously helps if you know lots of poets and they know your work.

Probably a bigger source of income than anthologies is doing workshops and writing projects in schools. That, too, is about visibility and building relationships with teachers. Word of mouth is a powerful tool. If you do good work, people will recommend you.

TCW: You published two pamphlets before The Ambulance Box collection. What is the difference between a ‘pamphlet’ and a ‘collection’?

AP: Size, price, binding and visibility. That’s all, really. Full collections get noticed more, but pamphlets have become much more visible in the past six or seven years.

TCW: Would you advise new poets to try their hand at self-publishing?

AP: Self-publishing isn’t something I’ve any experience of, although I considered it at one point. ‘Tonguefire’ and ‘Andrew Philip: A Sampler’ were published by Helena Nelson’s HappenStance Press. Publishing with a small press means you have the validation of someone else sinking their time and money into your work, as well as the benefit of an editor’s input and another person working to sell the publication. Self-published pamphlets don’t have that.

I can see that self-publishing is particularly useful if you’re doing non-mainstream work that more commercial small presses won’t touch. For instance, Stephen Nelson self-published a pamphlet of visual poems, The Faithful City, which uses colour, layout and fonts in ways that would put off most small presses.

Helena’s pamphlet guide How (Not) to Get Your Poetry Published includes a good discussion of this topic. There’s a lot of good advice in there.

TCW: What other advice would you give to new poets trying to get their work noticed?

AP: Read, read, read poetry and write, write, write it because that’s how you’ll get as good as you can. Read as broad a range as you can, historically and stylistically, but you must read contemporary poetry. Seek out informed criticism, take it on board and learn to sift out what elements of it are right for your writing.

Once you’re into the swing of all that, send out your work to good print and online magazines. If any editors take the trouble to give you notes of advice – or any notes at all – pay attention to what they say and keep sending to them. Magazine publication is still crucial to building a reputation in print. Look at the acknowledgements in your favourite contemporary poetry. Where do these poets publish? Aim for those magazines. In addition:

• Go to poetry readings. Become involved in running them. Read and comment on blogs.
• Maybe even write a blog, but don’t put all your poems on it. (Why would an editor take them if they’re all online?) [For advice on how to start your own blog see the Crafty Writer's Beginner Blogging for Writers series - Ed]
• Read at open mike sessions.
• Write reviews. In other words, become a player.
• In addition to Helena Nelson’s pamphlet guide mentioned above, there is excellent advice in Chris Hamilton-Emery’s book 101 Ways to Make Poems Sell.
• Claire Askew’s blog One Night Stanzas , which is where this tour stops next (on 23 June), is a good source of advice too. It’s aimed at new and, particularly, young poets.

TCW: Thanks Andy, and good luck with the tour (follow the rest of The Ambulance Box Tour here).

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Firstly, some of them have very long ‘lead times’. A lead time is the time from commission or acceptance of your article / story / poem until it actually appears. Aquila is one of only a few magazines in the UK that publish children’s fiction, so I wasn’t about to say no, “I’d rather take it elsewhere”. It’s the fourth piece they’ve published of mine in the same number of years, so I’m aware that patience is essential.

As the new writing editor of Plain Truth magazine I frequently get emails from writers frustrated at how long it takes for their work to appear. For that section of the magazine, our average lead time is 12 months, but 18 months is not unheard of. We only publish five times a year and only use one new writer per edition.

So my advice to new writers is: find out a magazine’s lead time so that you won’t be disappointed when it takes so long for your hard-crafted words to finally be read. And realise too that you will usually only get paid on publication, not acceptance.

FAQs

1. How long should I wait before sending my article to someone else?

I try to let writers know within four months whether or not I will use their material. But I think it’s acceptable for a writer to politely query after three months. And I mean politely! I’ve had writers demanding to know what’s taking me so long – and that’s simply a short-cut to the bin. If you’re told that a decision hasn’t been made yet, or that you’re still in ‘the queue’, give it another three months and enquire again.

2. What if I was told my article would appear by a certain date and it hasn’t?

Try to get a date of publication at commission. This may change if the editor later decides that your article will be more suited to another edition. In an ideal world they should tell you, but frequently they forget. So if your article doesn’t appear by a certain date, a polite enquiry is certainly in order. If at this point they don’t give you a firm publication date, I think you’re well within your rights to withdraw the article and send elsewhere.

3. Can I demand a kill fee?

A ‘kill fee’ is a percentage of the agreed payment for the article that may be paid if publication falls through. This is common in the USA and Writer’s Market will give you an idea of the kill fees on offer. Sadly, the UK industry doesn’t work the same way and kill fees are rarely if ever paid. Ho hum. For more on what to do to ensure you get paid, check out my article What to do when you don’t get paid. If you want to know how to approach editors have a look at writing a proposal, which is part of my free non-fiction writing course. The same advice is applicable to short story writers and poets too.

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In my introduction to creative writing classes, I’m amazed at how many people believe that free verse has no structure; the result is a formless offering of words that often leaves the reader unfulfilled or with a sense that something is not quite right. And because there is no predetermined pattern to refer to (eg an abab rhyme scheme) it’s difficult to pinpoint what’s wrong with the poem.

Now while I agree that writers of free verse do not have to conform to the ‘rules’ of set form poetry (eg sonnets, ballads, limerics, haiku etc., each with its own rules of rhythm, rhyme and meter) there is definitely structure. The difference is each poem defines its own structure which emerges from within. If you don’t like the word ‘structure’, consider balance, pattern or cohesion. The tricky thing with establishing your own structure in a poem is that you have to ‘teach’ your reader how to read it, and, once established, you need to continue with it – or subvert it, but more of that later.

Why structure?

Structure serves the mood or thematic intent of a poem. What do you want to say through this poem? How may the structure aid the communication of this idea? Structure also determines the pace at which the poem may be read. Do you want to slow your reader down at a certain point or speed them up? Why? All of these questions and answers should have an impact upon the individual structure of each poem.

In one of my classes I chose a piece of prose – an extract of an article from New Scientist – and asked each student to work the prose into a free verse poem. Each student had the same words, but the way they chose to structure the words, led to ten very different poems.

In free verse, the following techniques are frequently used to bring structure to a poem:

1. Repetition:

• of sound = rhyme
• meter = rhythm
• words – for emphasis, not just because of lazy writing.
• phrases – again for emphasis of a theme or effect
• letters = alliteration and assonance
• stanzas = refrains
• images – identical or thematically linked to emphasise a concept or ideas.

For example ‘Travel Sickness’, Nick Toczek.

2. Line breaks

Alternating line length provides internal rhythm and pace, tension and release. Don’t forget that a single word can be a line.

• Enjambment (when a sentence runs over onto the next line. Sometimes a sentence starts mid-line or even runs over onto the next stanza).
• End stops (where you choose to stop the line).

For example, ‘Television’, John Coldwell.

3. Stanza groupings

How many lines are in a stanza? You may wish to alternate stanzas with the same number of lines eg a 3 line stanza then 7 line stanza then 3 then 7 again. Can you see the structure that is emerging? A repetition of stanzas is known as a refrain.

For example ‘The Millennium Falcon’, Roger Stevens.

4. Spacing

The physical spacing of words on a page can establish a unique structure. For example, ‘Autumn’, Roger McGough.

5. Point of View shifts

Shifting between first, second and third person. The following poem by the late poet Stevie Smith shows this, plus many of the other devices already discussed.

Black March
I have a friend
At the end
Of the world.
His name is a breath

Of fresh air.
He is dressed in
Grey Chiffon
It has a
Peculiar look, like smoke.

It wraps him round
It blows out of place
It conceals him
I have not seen his face.

But I have seen his eyes, they are
As pretty and bright
As raindrops on black twigs
In March, and heard hims say:

I am a breath
Of fresh air for you, a change
By and by.

Black March I call him
Because of his eyes
Being like March raindrops
On black twigs.

(Such a pretty time when the sky
Behind black twigs can be seen
Stretched out in one
Uninterrupted
Cambridge blue cold as snow.)

But this friend
Whatever new names I give him
Is an old friend. He says:

Whatever names you give me
I am
A breath of fresh air,
A change for you.

6. Punctuation

You can establish a repetitive pattern or omit it completely. (See ‘Millennium Falcon). Remember, you don’t have to punctuate full sentences – you can break punctuation rules if it serves the poem better.

7. Juxtaposition of opposites.

For example, ‘This is the Weather’, Stephen Bowkett.

8. Metaphors, similes, unexpected descriptive adverbs and adjectives.

For example, ‘Thaw’ by Edward Thomas.

Thaw
Over the land freckled with snow half-thawed
The speculating rocks at their nests cawed
And saw from elm-tops, delicate as flower of grass,
What we below could not see, Winter pass.

9. Subversion

By setting up an expectation of pattern, you can subvert it by changing it. But this only works when the structure is already well established in the reader’s mind. The reader must come away thinking ‘that was clever’ rather than ‘huh? What happened to the structure?’ For example, ‘A Happy Kenning’, Clare Bevan.

Now write your own free verse poem establishing a structure with the elements above. If you would like to learn more about writing poetry, Peter Sansom’s excellent Writing Poems is a good place to start. Or check out how to write poems which is part of my free creative writing course. And don’t forget we offer a critiquing service if you’d like a professional evaluation of your work by one of our team.

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This morning, still half asleep, I opened the curtains on another grey morning and the first words that came into my head were: February. The Final Frontier. I’m not a Trekkie – I never was, honest – but that’s what I heard, complete with American accent. Then quickly after it came: February brings the rain, Thaws the frozen lake again. Marge brings breezes loud and shrill, Stirs the dancing daffodil. Hmmm … remembered lines … and rhyme, rhythm, assonance, alliteration …

Welcome to the poetry page!

I think it’s always worth remembering that poems are meant to be heard. Their origins lie in the ancient oral traditions of recitation, ceremony and song. As Sappho, a Greek poet of maybe three thousand years ago, once said (or wrote) about poetry:

Mere air, these words, but delicious to hear

At school I loved hearing those little poems about the months of the year. I didn’t know what fleecy dams or gillyflowers actually were but I loved the sound of them. And I loved the way I could memorise the lines and then retrieve and repeat them, aloud, whenever I wanted, simply for pleasure.

A large part of learning the craft and skill of writing a poem lies in paying attention to the sound it makes. The sound of its words and rhymes, the beat of its rhythm, its pauses. When I’m writing a poem I have to say it aloud. Even if I’ve only got a couple of lines or phrases I have to listen to them and try to hear beyond (or perhaps under) the meaning of the words in order to catch the emerging rhythm.

And in the process of making the poem, as it grows, I do this again and again. If I stumble over some words as I’m saying them, or if I find something too much of a tongue twister, I know it needs fixing – with different words perhaps, or maybe by using fewer syllables. If I find I’m pausing in the wrong place, it can be a matter of punctuation. A full stop might have to go. Or a comma might be needed (or a stanza or line break – they are part of poetry’s punctuation too). Punctuation, or the lack of it, plays a significant part in controlling the speed and rhythm of a poem.

In the work I do I read a lot of new poems and I can always tell which ones have not been read aloud, listened to, heard. Sometimes a poem will stutter along when the mood it’s trying to communicate is smooth; sometimes it misleads or confuses by the inappropriate use of hard consonants or gentle vowels or rhyme for the sake of it; sometimes it’s just running too fast and needs to take a breath.

Sound can inspire our poems too of course. Here’s an exercise to try:

Recall the sounds of your childhood and list as many as you can. Use first thoughts. Don’t discount any! Then choose one and write about it as intensively, as passionately as you can. Use lots of detail. Write in complete sentences. Try using similes.
As you concentrate on the sound of the ice cream van, your grandad whistling, the school bell, the wind outside your bedroom window in the night … you will almost certainly end up writing something significant about yourself, the people you lived with, your feelings then.
And if you choose another sound from your list and repeat the exercise you could write a series of poems …

Apart from listening to our own poems carefully, and scrutinising them for their sound and rhythmic effects, we can, and should, listen to the poetry of others. By reading poems aloud off the page of a book; by listening to recordings of poets reading their own work (always fascinating for me); by going to live readings. I’d encourage poets to do any or all of these things – because by hearing poetry and listening to it well, we can learn much about its enduring power and about writing it.

This is the first in a series of guest blogs on poetry. If you have written some poetry and would like some professional input, Joan is available for critiquing.

Related posts:

1. How Free is Free Verse?
2. Atrocious teenage poetry
3. Poetry: Tolstoy in Love