It is the classic picture of the writer that the muse takes him or her by the throat and ‘stuff’ pours out, but unfortunately this is not the case. This is particularly true of my own writing history where I came to a dead halt for many years while life took over.
However, this means that I have a body of material that I can look back on with dispassion (while now writing new material), so these thoughts on the genesis of poems (in particular) is interesting and useful to my own writing. This is another idea for when the ideas won’t come.
So – shape poetry. This can be a satisfying exercise – the most obvious one is the train journey, snaking its way down the page; but any shape can lend itself to a poem which is both the words and the shape on the page, interrelated. The second example here is a pendant.
The interesting question is the chicken and egg one, but realistically it is easier to choose a shape to fit a poem into than to try to fit an existing poem into a shape.
Shirley Bell POETRY ART CREATIVITY 