Artlessly Artful
Gloucestershire Poet Laureate Z. D. Dicks takes a moment to reflect on his poetic practice
In quiet times I feel a hunger that develops into a compulsion. This is where my poetry starts. I often write late as a result, when everyone else sleeps.
Usually, there is a hook that pulls an idea up from the abyss, often around a theme I’m working on, but not always. It is often a memory or image that comes into my mind and I endeavour to capture 90 seconds, more often referred to as a moment, of this experience.
This to get to the core of what drew me to a subject and keep a poem focussed on why that event matters, for example, it could be the seconds leading up to, during and after a birth, or a death.
What is significant is what was happening and how this impacted those who bore witness. I try to capture the sensory experiences of those involved. I try not to get distracted by the obsessions with publication and politicking in the poetry world. I cast no aspersions and I admit I have been guilty of this in the past but I’ve turned my map up the right road so to speak, so, when writing in the early hours the focus is on universal truth. What that means is, for the most part, capturing experiences that most can relate to, with a jazz salad of theme related words (a register if you will). This register of words is noted down mentally or alongside the poem and is dotted into the narrative of the event recounted.
If halfway through a poem I get stuck or think ‘hmmm, I don’t know where to take this’ I look for poems on a similar theme and read. As a dyslexic, I really appreciate the value of the magic inherent in the esoteric mundane. When you can open a page immediately to revelatory knowledge and see that it can inspire, defeat, prompt laughter or cue someone to blubber it alters how existence is observed. You begin to question everything, such as, sound only existing in your own head. As I became aware of this it gave a great insight into how powerful the implied connections of words can be.
There are restrictions to power though.The barriers to writing are the ones you set yourself or those imposed upon you. I may not be able to influence the walls put in my way but I can make a choice of how to navigate, around, over and through. It is different for all of us but having a goal in mind helps.
My goal is to write concise poetry where every word works and isn’t wasted, to make stanzas that go beyond mere beautiful description or rhyme.
Why poetry and not another art form? Well, to be frank, during my time in martial arts I was taught to ‘work on the weak’ in my case it was my stretches that needed graft to do extravagant kicks but in art I always had a (at least I thought) a natural flare for painting and using my hands, so, I concentrated on developing my writing further.
Firstly, I just wrote, as I always had, as an outlet for my emotions and looking back those poems will never see the light of day, tucked away in a closed drawer. Later when I attended a singular module at Gloucestershire University, back in 2008 I think, the business of crafting came more into play and this made all of the difference.
By taking poetry beyond the self and putting it into the public domain of workshops I received honest feedback that made me change my approach to better communicate ideas. As, up to that point, I naively didn’t consider that another human would be reading and trying to understand that which was written and as a result their needs had to be factored into my approach as a poet. Later, I would go onto attain my Masters in Creative and Critical Writing but it all started in those workshops back in 2008 that my seriousness started when my first ‘proper’ poem was created. The ideas and prompts given then guided me greatly and I will forever be thankful as a result to Nigel McLoughlin and later Angela France for their support (and more importantly patience).
I have had many successes in my writing journey but most aren’t actually about the writing but in connecting people which is so much more important in some ways. Through the creation and development of the Gloucestershire Poetry Society and the Gloucester Poetry Festival (plus becoming Gloucestershire Poet Laureate) I have had opportunities to reach out to coach and encourage others. This was done to support writing in a way that suited the individuals needs, so, that they, together with us, can equally find inspiration.
As much as I want to say it is all supernatural feverish writing, the truth is the romantic image of poetry, being this higher truth that comes in bouts of inspiration, for the most part just isn’t the case. The small details and observations are where occasions for writing come, in the day to day. How hair may flutter into a veil or when a pigeon might thrum like a biplane overhead. It is in the shared life that binds us all in mortality and the appreciation of frailty. The best examples of poetry are crafted to encapsulate vulnerability and appear artlessly artful.
Z. D. Dicks, ‘a gothic Seamus Heaney’ (Anna Saunders) is Gloucestershire Poet Laureate, Founder of The Gloucestershire Poetry Society, and Director of the Gloucester Poetry Festival.
His work has been published in ‘Obsessed with Pipework’, ‘Sarasvati’, ‘Ink, Sweat and Tears’, ‘Three Drops from a Cauldron’, ‘Fresh Air Poetry’, ‘I am not a silent poet’, ‘The Hedgehog Poetry Press’ plus many more.
