Writing in Another Voice
As a poet,
I tend to return to the same subjects over and over, notably family,
relationships, and to a lesser extent, the landscape around me. In spite of the
fact that these subjects are near and dear to my heart, some recent experiences
have shown me that I care about, and am capable of writing poetry about, much
more.
Last year,
I participated in National Novel Writing Month (NaNo) as well as a chapbook
challenge that involved writing a poem every day through the month of November.
Because I wanted to tie the two together, I invented a poet as part of the
novel and wrote the poems in his voice.
The novel
is a tween sci fi, and I wanted to bring out the spiritual values of the
aliens, and so my poet's work was intended to be one of their sacred texts and
contained a fair number of prayers, affirmations, and poems that spoke to the
society's values. I found myself slipping into my imaginary poet's head,
and despite the fact that I don't usually write spiritual or religious
poetry, these works flowed easily, and I had no difficulty either deciding on
the subject matter or in expressing what I felt would be my poet's values. I
ended up with thirty poems, thirty poems about subject matter I cared about
deeply, but which, if not for the novel, it would never have occurred me to
write about.
This year,
I'm again participating in Nano, and I've again created a poet, this time a
Terran (human) poet, and this time, also, I find myself slipping easily into my
created persona, and again, writing about subject matter that I would not
normally take up. Constance, my imaginary poet, it appears, is far more
political than I. She has written a number of poems that speak to the chaotic
political situation of her time, a hundred years before my novel begins, and
about a hundred years in our future.
As a poet,
I am always striving to extend myself, both in terms of what and how I write my
poems. Imagining myself a different person has proven to be a way to do that.
Here are two of Constance Trusdatter's poems:
Corrupt
Government
Broken promise, broken dreams,
fall to politician's schemes.
Wish for power, wish for might,
wave a flag and say all's right.
If the people ask for more,
find a way to start a war.
Let the trouble be distraction
from unsatisfying action,
poverty and hunger, too,
to obfuscate what's real and true.
We seek a place of safety,
a shelter from turmoil that surrounds us,
where we may build our ships,
recover from our wounds.
Despair descends like a smothering blanket,
heavy, wet. We breathe in smoke
when we need oxygen.
Ash clogs our lungs.
Gangs roam the plains.
They burn our crops,
steal our horses,
rape our women and murder our children.
Where can we find our leaders?
They cower in a dark hole,
creep away under dark clouds.,
never to be seen again.
A new age will rise
from the smoking coals
of what was once
our country,
paid for with blood
of our brothers.
Margaret Fieland
is one of six
Poetic Muselings. Their recently releasesd poetry anthology,
Lifelines, published by Inkspotter Publishing, is
available from Amazon.com at
http://tinyurl.com/bq4vwz6
