Location in Poetry

I had hiccups this evening.  I can’t remember the last time I had hiccups; it was years ago.

Not that having the hicupps has anything whatsoever to do with anything else: I just thought I’d mention it.

I’ve posted another writing workshop this evening, it’s about choosing locations in which to set your story, but it could equally be about setting a poem.  We don’t usually see location as a primary factor in poetry but it’s one of the important ‘unconcious’ things in poems.  

We probably  all know about ‘The Lake Poets’: William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, although only Wordsworth actually lived in the Lake District (which is actually where I live too: it’s awsome!) 

The collective term of ‘Lake Poets’ was first mooted by Francis Jeffery, editor and critic, in the ‘Edinburgh Review’ 1807.  He  didn’t have much time for the Lake poets and wrote disparagingly about them, preferring the writings of Keats, particularly ‘Endymion’, which was trashed elsewhere; no accounting for taste I suppose. 

I would hazard a guess that Wordsworth’s ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’ is the most famous poem in the history of poetry, I would also hazard a guess that almost everybody who has read the poem has a image in their mind of the setting of the poem: ‘Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze…Along the margin of the bay…The waves beside them danced…’  How else could this be envisaged but as a typical English lake?  The setting of the poem.

Anyway, location. It’s good to know where your poem is set, even if you don’t share that knowledge with your readers.  That way you  know where you are going with a poem, it helps to set a concrete image in your head, which gives your writing a touch of authenticity.

Now, this may seem at odds with my Immediacy revolution, but it’s not really. 

When I say that raw writing needs to be words straight from your head, I’m not suggesting that you don’t ever do any mental preperation.  You can think about your words as much as you like, in fact, if you are like me you’ll be thinking about words most of the time.

I’ve found some more Immediacy poetry, from a workshop I attended about 8 or 9 years ago, run by my very good friend, Thom the World Poet. I’ll post it on the poetry page, please let me know what your reaction to it is, it’s called: Roswell, here?

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