'Untitled' Poetry Workshop

with Jacinta Le Plastrier

At the June writing workshop run by visiting writer Jacinta Le Plastrier, we discussed the various ways we began writing poems: working towards a publishing or reading deadline, setting aside a designated or regular writing time, having to submit work as part of a course etc. Some people like to write notes towards a plan and others preferred a more ‘intuitive’ and less goal-oriented approach. We also discussed how other writers influenced us. Jacinta allocated the last quarter of the workshop to writing and several participants have finished drafts which are included here under the loose title of ‘Untitled’ as a gesture to Jacinta’s practice in her own work – thank you, Jacinta!

 

Maurice Corlett

untitled

 

I intend in the next 28 days to do … A looooong prosy poem out of Fifty Dollars A Day already I have taken out the Wagga Wagga bit but maybe I should leave that in because it has references to Baylis Street and the Murrumbidgee levee bank and the Victoria Hotel where I had a Goat beer and this morning as I walked down the Turvey Park Hotel drive through I saw advertised a slab of Goat cans for $60 and I thought that was expensive and realised what a bargain I had got on the 4X stubbies from Tolland so I steamed on to the newsagent and bought my first Saturday Paper and returned to the car and drove home where things were not good so Lyn and I left for Joshua’s soccer ( which really should be football because that’s what the rest of the world calls it ) where I told him he had played a blinder because – as I said to him out at Renee’s place – he kept his eye on the ball and not on the fancy footwork which takes me back to the Virgina Woolf quote that I came across in my notebook during Jacinta’s workshop now I can’t find it as I mustn’t spend time looking when we are supposed to be writing continuously without pause to reflect or find quotes about not being flash in your writing just yourself which is difficult sometimes – well maybe all the time as we are always becoming someone else aren’t we or are just the same only different. That’s a better end.

 

 

 

The poem below is a jpeg by Anne Seebach …

Jan Pittard

Unentitled

 

How does a poem ‘come in’?

like a psychic message from the other side?

like a brain dump refined and tidied?

like a circling animal that finally settles?

Are punctuation and grammar political?

titles manipulative?

hard left alignment patriarchal?

hard left makes me think of doctrinaire Marxism

it means no such thing of course

just justified

In our poetic practice there are many rooms

¾    a room with a view

¾    a room of one’s own

¾    a room with many drafts

                                                                                                                                        ¾     room for one more

we are all entitled to our opinions

we  all must  find our individual voice

all writing is derivative

AI ensures that now

 

writing well, or uniquely, is the best revenge

 

letting the poem in

however imperfect!

Booranga Writers’ Centre acknowledges the Wiradjuri people as the traditional custodians of the land in which we live and work and write, and pays respects to Elders past, present and future.