SUCCESSFUL POETRY 1: BASIC NOTES by Prof. Emmanuel Oluwaseun Dairo
I'm Prof. [KIS added this] Emmanuel Oluwaseun Dairo and I'll be giving basic lectures on the various things poets need to have in mind in order to write poems that succeed in their primary mission of getting the reader invested.
This class will be conducted in simple language in order to aid easy comprehension by everyone.
Let me first freely admit that there is nothing new under the sun – or the moon for that matter.
This is because our experiences are ours only in terms of time and space and situation; otherwise, experiences are universal.
Here, we shall look at some of the ways by which a poet may imbue his poetry with an authentic feel.
1. Know Thyself First.
Humans are possessed of different attributes and characteristics and each person has his own default predilections which may or may not be similar to those of the next person.
Some are naturally withdrawn, others are outgoing by nature; some are creatures of great feeling, others of great sense; some are rational, others sentimental; some have as yet no knowledge of any fruit, others have eaten the apple many times over.
Whatever the case, each person’s peculiar experiences, knowledge attributes come together to define his general attitude to things -- what is referred to as VOICE in literary theory.
Whenever one engages in poetry, it is important to know where one is starting from – every flight of fancy must begin from a visible airstrip; for, self-awareness is the launchpad for the imagination.
2. Follow your mood not the crowd!
Poets are creatures of feeling, poetry then is bred of feeling. It follows then that each person’s poetry should be bred of each person’s feeling, not of what everyone else seems to be writing about. In African literature for example, there is this general expectation that everyone should write on social and political issues else he isn’t an authentic African writer. This need not be so. Poetry is wide enough to accommodate the social crusader and the romantic, the moralist and the pleasure seeker. Write what you like, what you feel like writing, not what the public expects. Osagie Fervency writes mostly on romantic themes simply because that is where he is most comfortable. KIS is a social crusader by choice and that predilection reflects in most of his writings. Whenever a prominent figure dies, there is a flood of eulogies.
If you don’t feel like writing one, then don’t!
Be led by feeling, not trends. It is feeling that animates the poem and the percipient critic would easily note the lack of life in a poem not bred of feeling.
3. Use words well.
If you want to paint a picture of ordinary life, employing bombastic and grandiloquent vocabulary will do your poem little service and even less good.
On the other hand, romantic poetry demands words that are sensual in effect. This is an extremely important point: your choice of words needs to be contextually relevant.
Nightingales and snow, for example, have no business in a poem about Nigeria – neither do British dialectal diction. (Do I hear some groans from those who write like Shakespeare? Well, you all should petition God to move Nigeria to a temperate climate).
4. Use vocabulary you can handle.
Let’s all admit we would like to use flashy and high-sounding words in our poems if we can. But the reality is that not everyone can handle grand diction.
5. Put fresh spins on archetypes.
There are some archetypes that are so common in poetry that only a fresh perspective saves them from becoming stale whenever they are used nowadays. These include the idea of life as a journey, death as the end. Another is the depiction of Nigeria’s wealth as the national cake.
Now, suppose you want to pen a poem about life’s journey, rather than use the common portrait of a journey by foot or car/bus/trailer, you could be more imaginative and use other things that move from one place to another. You could use a plane, a space mission, keke napep, etc. or simply create your own vehicle.
Another strategy is to change the environment of travel. For instance, you could remove your metaphorical car from the road and place it in the high-pressure situation of a race track.
There is this old elevator in my faculty of six floors. Now, I could use that elevator’s journey from the ground floor to the top floor as a metaphor for life’s journey. That’s one way to change both vehicle and environment.
Do that and I’ll be your fan.
6. Learn to compress your thoughts.
Poetry isn’t just about expressing yourself, it is also about compressing that expression in a way that encourages the reader to dig for the meaning behind the lines. That’s the reason a line of poetry is usually shorter than a line of prose.
Obviously, the level of packaging varies from poet to poet and poem to poem, but some unwrapping is still a necessity if your penning is to be regarded as poetry.
If you have nothing to compress, kindly send the article to Punch or YNaija. Don’t k-leg it into lines of poetry.
7. Some topics are better felt than imagined.
Senator Ihenyen’s new collection Stranger in the Mirror of my Life is about the various facets of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, especially in Nigeria.
The author spent actual time visiting scores of AIDS victims, listening to their stories, witnessing their sufferings, empathising and sympathising with them rather than simply imagining their woes.
As a result, readers with HIV will find his poems very relatable and readers without HIV will find them believable.
If you want to write about flood victims, go visit some flood victims; if you want to write on rape, go talk to rape victims etc etc. for these kinds of subjects, research is as important as the imagination
That'll be all for now. We shall continue in same vein when we next assemble here.
Please feel free to drop your comments, questions and. suggestions in the comments section. Also read and share.
Thank You.
This class will be conducted in simple language in order to aid easy comprehension by everyone.
Here, we shan’t indulge in some complicated treatise on what makes a poem successful. Rather, our focus is on how poets can infuse their creations with that feel of originality, freshness and relatability to make their works stand the test of time – and of criticism.In this lesson, we look at some basic things poets must consider before and during the penning process. For one to make poems that succeed, understanding of the intangibles we shall treat below is of utmost necessity.
Let me first freely admit that there is nothing new under the sun – or the moon for that matter.
No matter how interesting and novel your piece seems to be, chances are it has already been written about by someone else at some place during some time in history; and it will probably be treated on by poets at a future date.
This is because our experiences are ours only in terms of time and space and situation; otherwise, experiences are universal.
Thus the writer who writes on loss or death or love only adds his individual perspective to the innumerable body of works and thoughts already written on those subjects.The question then arises: how can the poet stand out among the crowd?
Here, we shall look at some of the ways by which a poet may imbue his poetry with an authentic feel.
1. Know Thyself First.
Humans are possessed of different attributes and characteristics and each person has his own default predilections which may or may not be similar to those of the next person.
Some are naturally withdrawn, others are outgoing by nature; some are creatures of great feeling, others of great sense; some are rational, others sentimental; some have as yet no knowledge of any fruit, others have eaten the apple many times over.
Whatever the case, each person’s peculiar experiences, knowledge attributes come together to define his general attitude to things -- what is referred to as VOICE in literary theory.
Whenever one engages in poetry, it is important to know where one is starting from – every flight of fancy must begin from a visible airstrip; for, self-awareness is the launchpad for the imagination.
2. Follow your mood not the crowd!
Poets are creatures of feeling, poetry then is bred of feeling. It follows then that each person’s poetry should be bred of each person’s feeling, not of what everyone else seems to be writing about. In African literature for example, there is this general expectation that everyone should write on social and political issues else he isn’t an authentic African writer. This need not be so. Poetry is wide enough to accommodate the social crusader and the romantic, the moralist and the pleasure seeker. Write what you like, what you feel like writing, not what the public expects. Osagie Fervency writes mostly on romantic themes simply because that is where he is most comfortable. KIS is a social crusader by choice and that predilection reflects in most of his writings. Whenever a prominent figure dies, there is a flood of eulogies.
If you don’t feel like writing one, then don’t!
Be led by feeling, not trends. It is feeling that animates the poem and the percipient critic would easily note the lack of life in a poem not bred of feeling.
3. Use words well.
If you want to paint a picture of ordinary life, employing bombastic and grandiloquent vocabulary will do your poem little service and even less good.
On the other hand, romantic poetry demands words that are sensual in effect. This is an extremely important point: your choice of words needs to be contextually relevant.
Nightingales and snow, for example, have no business in a poem about Nigeria – neither do British dialectal diction. (Do I hear some groans from those who write like Shakespeare? Well, you all should petition God to move Nigeria to a temperate climate).
The tools of the poet’s trade are words, and what powerful tools they are! When used well, they can bring tears to a lover’s eyes, fear to a tyrant’s breast and a whole nation to its knees.But when used wrongly? Aww, let’s not even go there – just get critic insurance because you’ll need it.
4. Use vocabulary you can handle.
Let’s all admit we would like to use flashy and high-sounding words in our poems if we can. But the reality is that not everyone can handle grand diction.
Poetry is less about flamboyant language than about exciting the reader’s senses. All words can be used to poetic effect but not all kinds of words are appropriate in all kinds of poetry (even this lecture uses simple words – it is a plain tutorial not some grand academic treatise).If you don’t know how to string big words together to achieve poetic effect then by all means use simple words else your big-grammarred poem will be sentenced to death by gruesome critical destruction at the hands of no-nonsense critics like Jesse Unoh and Senator Ihenyen. Evil geniuses, both of them.
5. Put fresh spins on archetypes.
There are some archetypes that are so common in poetry that only a fresh perspective saves them from becoming stale whenever they are used nowadays. These include the idea of life as a journey, death as the end. Another is the depiction of Nigeria’s wealth as the national cake.
Now, suppose you want to pen a poem about life’s journey, rather than use the common portrait of a journey by foot or car/bus/trailer, you could be more imaginative and use other things that move from one place to another. You could use a plane, a space mission, keke napep, etc. or simply create your own vehicle.
Another strategy is to change the environment of travel. For instance, you could remove your metaphorical car from the road and place it in the high-pressure situation of a race track.
There is this old elevator in my faculty of six floors. Now, I could use that elevator’s journey from the ground floor to the top floor as a metaphor for life’s journey. That’s one way to change both vehicle and environment.
Do that and I’ll be your fan.
6. Learn to compress your thoughts.
Poetry isn’t just about expressing yourself, it is also about compressing that expression in a way that encourages the reader to dig for the meaning behind the lines. That’s the reason a line of poetry is usually shorter than a line of prose.
Obviously, the level of packaging varies from poet to poet and poem to poem, but some unwrapping is still a necessity if your penning is to be regarded as poetry.
If you have nothing to compress, kindly send the article to Punch or YNaija. Don’t k-leg it into lines of poetry.
7. Some topics are better felt than imagined.
Senator Ihenyen’s new collection Stranger in the Mirror of my Life is about the various facets of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, especially in Nigeria.
The author spent actual time visiting scores of AIDS victims, listening to their stories, witnessing their sufferings, empathising and sympathising with them rather than simply imagining their woes.
As a result, readers with HIV will find his poems very relatable and readers without HIV will find them believable.
If you want to write about flood victims, go visit some flood victims; if you want to write on rape, go talk to rape victims etc etc. for these kinds of subjects, research is as important as the imagination
That'll be all for now. We shall continue in same vein when we next assemble here.
Please feel free to drop your comments, questions and. suggestions in the comments section. Also read and share.
Thank You.
