"write About What You Know" - A Pitfall For Poets

The basic advice of "write about what you know" is repeated over and over again. But when it comes to poetry, too much attention to the actual details of reality isn't a good idea. Each word and image needs to be carefully chosen to contribute as much as possible to the final poem.

It's often efective to use personal experience as a jumping off point for your writing. Once you've decided to turn the reality into poetry, though, it's important to shake off your personal attachment to it. If you don't, you are likely to end up including irrelevant details that have no place in a poem and have no general appeal.

Suppose you decide to write a poem based on the first time you met your wife. After all, most people have had at least one such experience, so you might think this is a universal topic that will appeal to many readers.

As you start to plan, you remember you've been advised to include concrete details to give your poem more impact, so you try to recall exactly how it happened:

It was April. A wet Tuesday afternoon about four o'clock. She was wearing a purple dress and caught her heel as she stepped off the number sixteen bus at the corner of Green Lane and Seagull Grove...

How many of these facts should make it into the finished poem? Think about each in turn and what they can contribute in imagery, sounds and metre.

Does it matter that it was a Tuesday, for example? A "wet Wednesday" is a lot more alliterative. (Unless it was a "Tuesday, in torrential rain...", of course!) Is the time important? Maybe "Thursday at three" would be more effective.

Remember how The Crystals' song "Da Doo Ron Ron" begins "I met him on a Monday"? In reality, far more meetings happen at weekends, and Thursday, Friday or Sunday would all have worked just has well metrically. But the sounds wouldn't be so tight: notice how the whole line is tied together by the "m" sounds in "met", "him" and "Monday".

Mind you, the fact that it sounds good isn't a sufficient reason to include a fact or image in the finished poem. Are either day or time actually of any relevance to what you're writing?

"Seagull Grove" is a lovely street name - perhaps it should have a poem of its own - but unless there are any other birds or wildlife in the account, or unless you're going to link it in by describing the dress flaring out like wings as she tripped, it's more likely to distract attention than add anything. And as for the dress itself, remember that you're never going to find a rhyme for purple.

Of course it's useful to look at the real details of the occasion, but you should be willing to pick and choose which facts and images you include, and to manipulate them to suit your final poem. Remember that you're writing poetry, not history and not a journal entry.

One last piece of advice: if your wife is going to be offended if you change the details to produce a better poem, maybe you should limit your readership to those with a personal interest - your writing isn't likely to appeal to a universal audience.

By: Gwyneth Box

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Gwyneth Box is a widely published, award-winning poet with extensive teaching experience. Visit => www.tantamount.com/words/ to take a free trial of The Poet's Toolbox, her innovative on-line poetry techniques course which explores metre, form, layout, rhyme and sound in modern poetry.