Wild Fridays: Moonlight Musings

Process and Product

I was having a facebook chat with Jasmine Logan (whom I featured here recently) when she accidentally sent me a photo of a whiteboard she was working on, mapping out a new poem. (She only meant to snap it for her own records.) When I say mapping, I mean mind-mapping.

I've known of this technique since first encountering it decades ago in the book 'Writing the Natural Way' by Gabriele Lusser Rico. She called it clustering. Here is an example from her book:

Since then it's taken off, been used for many different purposes besides writing, and is taught in schools. It's decades since I tried it as a writing tool, and then only briefly. I did the exercises in Rico's book, and they worked, but somehow the method didn't stick. 

I guess that's because, when you've been making poems since age seven, by the time you're an adult you tend to fall back on what's already working. (Much as, having learned to two-finger type when I was nine, I never learned to touch-type later. Every time I tried, I became impatient and went back to what I already did quite well enough for my needs.) 

Nevertheless I exclaimed to Jasmine, 'I love the way you work!' It looked so active and immediate.

I find process fascinating – especially the fact that we can have very different processes, yet all of them can produce excellent poems.

For me, poetry tends to occur as phrases, lines, even whole verses already formed. This happens whether they just bubble up into my consciousness, apparently from nowhere, or whether I decide to write on a particular topic (be that a prompt, or something else that engages me). So I start with what comes into my head, and go from there. Those original words usually do form the beginning of the poem, but sometimes they turn out to be at the end of it or somewhere in the middle, and sometimes they don't stay in the finished poem at all. 

I'm like the late Australian poet Judith Rodriguez, who was famously quoted as saying, 'How can I know what a poem will say until I've written it?' Even when I work to a prompt, I don't know where it will take me until I get there. 

I've been intrigued to discover that some of my poet friends work quite differently from that. They start with an idea of what they want to write about, and also have a pretty clear idea of what they wish to say on that topic. At least some of them then explore it in prose until it's expressed coherently, and only then begin to shape it into verse. Some very good poets work like that. It puzzles me, but I can't deny that for them it's an effective technique.

Then of course there are many other aspects to process. Some people need quiet in order to create. Noise doesn't bother me; I can tune it out. Some people like specific rituals to help them get into a creative frame of mind; others (including me) dive right in. Some find that listening to music somehow helps the words to flow. (Classical music seems to be what works best for them, I observe. Which may be one reason I don't do that, as I prefer other kinds of music which might not be so conducive. Blues could work; not so sure about heavy metal.) 

Some write best first thing in the morning, others late at night.

There are those who like to do a lot of thinking before they put pen to paper – even, in some cases, to go for a walk before they start writing, or to sit and meditate. And of course there are plenty of us now who don't put pen to paper any more, but fingers to keys. 

There are fiction writers who save newspaper cuttings to get inspiration for plots and characters. There are poets who fill notebooks with lists of words that appeal to them. There are people who go out to cafés to write; others who must have their own desk in their own room; others again whose most productive spot is the kitchen table. 

All methods work, but only some of them work for a particular individual. What do you favour?

Please tell me in the comments. I'd love to know your thoughts, and read your descriptions of your own processes.


Post-script:

I'm currently (at the time of preparing this post) reading Patti Smith's latest book, Year of the Monkey, and just came to the part where she describes herself and her late friend Sam Shepherd, towards the end of his life, working together on revising a manuscript, '... me reading and transcribing, Sam writing out loud in real time.'

She says: 'There are several changes and new passages which he verbalizes to avoid the struggle of writing by hand.' 

He's in a wheelchair at the time she writes of, and can no longer play his cherished Gibson guitar.

She says: 'Some time ago he told me that one must write in absolute solitude, but necessity has shifted his process.'

That would be a good place, aesthetically and philosophically, at which to end this. But wait, there's more! It's an important more.

'Sam adjusts and seems invigorated by the prospect of focusing on something new.'

Over to you! 

Material shared in this post is presented for study and review. Poems, photos, and other writings and images remain the property of the copyright owners, usually the authors.

Moonlight Musings

How exciting to see the new ‘interactive’ Moonlight Musings hosted by Magaly get such a great response. There will be more!

Meanwhile this is the regular version, where we invite discussion in the comments but don’t ask you to write any creative pieces on the topic (unless you're overwhelmingly inspired to do so – in which case you might care to share them at a future Poetry Pantry).

Today I am wondering: 

What Name Are You Making?

As a writer, do you use your own name?

Or – in some cases – which of your own names do you use?

Do you write under your real name or a pseudonym?

Does every writer face the decision whether to use their own name or a pen-name? Or does it never occur to some of us to be known as anything but ourselves?

I was still a schoolgirl when I started to speak about choosing ’writer’ (or, even more daringly, ‘poet’) as a profession. Some people asked if I was going to take a pen-name. The question surprised me; I hadn’t thought of such a possibility. When I did, I quickly decided that I wanted to stand behind what I wrote, and that seemed to mean using my own name. I wanted to write so honestly that I could face being called on it. (Whilst understanding that truth and fact are not necessarily the same, and aiming for authenticity in my fictions too.)

But I didn’t like the surname I was born with. Luckily, my writings as Rosemary Robinson appeared only in school magazines. By the time I wanted to go more public, I had a married name: Nissen. 

So I did use my own name, legally mine, just not the one I was born with. (I felt a bit sorry sometimes that schoolteachers and classmates who knew me as Rosemary Robinson would never find out I had fulfilled the writerly promise they once saw in me – but not sorry enough to use the old name.)

That was all right until, many years later, I divorced and remarried.

The complications of changing one's name

In a women writers’ group recently, someone asked about the wisdom of hyphenating her name after a forthcoming marriage – her name as a writer, that is – or sticking to a byline she’s already known by, and using different names in public and private. 

‘Stick with what you’re known as,’ most people advised. It did seem like good advice. I’d received the same myself, after remarrying. 

‘You’ve already got a name,’ my poet friends said, meaning a name as a poet. ‘You’d be mad to change it.’ Not only had I been widely published in magazines and anthologies as Rosemary Nissen, and established the name as a performance poet, I’d had two books published with that authorship.

I considered the distinguished Australian poet Judith Rodriguez. As a young woman she started being published, to some notice, as Judith Green. On marrying she changed her name both privately and professionally to Rodriguez, and went on to great acclaim. When she and her first husband divorced after many years of marriage and she married fellow-poet Thomas Shapcott, she continued to write and publish as Judith Rodriguez. I'm sure it never occurred to her to do anything else. It was a very big name by then, very well established.

On the other hand, the younger poet Liz Hall, who had also made a name for herself (if not quite to the same degree) hyphenated her name on marrying and became Liz Hall-Downs. Similarly, poet and children's author Paty Marshall, well-known by that name, on marrying a second time became Paty Marshall-Stace. It seemed to work for them.

Andrew Wade and I moved interstate soon after marrying, where no-one had heard of me as a poet, and everyone knew us as Mr and Mrs Wade. Hyphenating seemed the way to go.

It wasn’t the best idea, professionally. Melbourne people still thought of me as Rosemary Nissen and Murwillumbah people knew me as Rosemary Wade. And, having moved from a major city with a thriving poetry scene to a small country town with none, I embraced the online poetry world instead. That didn’t help. 

I almost disappeared! When I sometimes reconnected with people I’d known previously in literary circles (other than close friends) it wasn’t uncommon for them to say, 

‘Oh – Rosemary NISSEN! NOW I get it.’

Gradually I made a name as Rosemary Nissen-Wade, and there are people now who understand that Rosemary Nissen and Rosemary Nissen-Wade are the same. But it’s taken two decades! Meanwhile some editors who knew me back when, and also know I’m now Rosemary Nissen-Wade, have still published me as Rosemary Nissen (without consultation). Others, who didn’t know me before, have put my name in the index under W instead of N, though I thought the hyphen would have ensured otherwise (so again I disappear).

Perhaps I should have expected it. My husband Andrew was christened Ewart Wade, by which name he was known as a film editor and as a writer and publisher for the Australian film industry. He told me he'd hated his first name and got sick of people spelling it Uitt or pronouncing it ee-wart, so he changed it legally to Andrew (because he had a girlfriend at the time whose children said he looked like an Andrew) – and promptly disappeared for many people. Later, as Andrew E Wade, he was a journalist and a children's author. Because of the name change, it was as if there were not only two different careers but two different people having them.

Embracing the Invention

My friend Helen Patrice (fiction writer, non-fiction writer and poet) published as Helen Sargeant when she was young and single. It was her name, but she didn’t like the surname much. She didn’t particularly care for her married surname either, and it’s lucky she never used it for her writing because that marriage ended early. During the longish period before marrying a second time, she decided to select her own surname. She chose Patrice because (a) many women were choosing women’s names as surnames at the time, and (b) she fell in love with the name after seeing a newsreader whose first name was Patrice. She says she ‘test drove it’ for a couple of years, then adopted it legally.

I asked her what were the ramifications. She said:

‘Basically, having to start over. People not connecting the two identities despite it being no secret. Having someone tell me that I wrote like Helen Sargeant, who suddenly stopped writing, probably died.’ 

Like me, she has now forged her writing identity under the new name – and it’s on the covers of her published books – but it took a while.

Prominent spoken-word poet Tug Dumbly must have taken that name early in his career. In his recent book Son Songs, he describes that name as ‘the pseudonym that swallowed the man formerly – and in some parts still – known as Geoffrey Robert Forrester (which is a better literary name)'. Is there a tinge of regret inside those brackets? Tug Dumbly must have seemed like a great name for a performance poet when he adopted it, and he probably didn’t realise how respected a poet he would become. But he’s earned the acclaim and it’d be crazy to change such a well-known name now.

Blogging names

What of those who use pseudonyms on their blogs? Many who do so still let it be known who they really are. Others have always been more firmly anonymous, or at least pseudonymous, not revealing any personal details. 

I have the impression that most use their real names when they publish a book. I can think of several from this community who have done so.

In conclusion

Yes, I suppose it all comes down to what we intend to do with our writings, both in the short and long term. Yet how can we know from the beginning where this path will take us? 

If we want our work to be remembered, does it even matter what name it is remembered by? It’s Alice in Wonderland we love, whether it’s by Lewis Carol or the Rev Charles Dodgson. We don’t need to know the full name of Dr Seuss to be able to quote from his books. Would John Le Carré’s or George Orwell’s works chill us any more or any less under their authors' real names? There are many such examples. Pablo Neruda, Stendahl, Voltaire, Henry Handel Richardson, Mark Twain, James Herriot, Bob Dylan….

Meanwhile, a new performance venue in my little country town is flourishing. As a regular, I am becoming known simply as Rosemary. People who know me only from that context greet me by name in the street. Rosemary the poet. I love it!

And you?

What name are you making for yourself? What if your writing should achieve lasting fame – who would you want to be remembered as?


Note: I use myself and people I know here because I am familiar with those particular details. (Except for Paty Marshall-Stace, they have all previously been featured at Poets United.)

The Living Dead

~ Honouring our poetic ancestors ~

Five poems on memory

Here you come, memory,
with your big bag.
Or is it me staggering
hauling the monster treasure?
Or me there inside?
(Just inside my boundaries
waits last year's woman,
behind my nose, her nose,
further inside, the schoolgirl
with her stained finger callus,
holding the baby, the oldest me, in the dark
like a wooden babushka.)

In a flash
St Elmo's fire, the portent,
touches the taut rigging,
strikes, streaks, leaps,
terrifies the sailors.

I wake up struggling with memory.
Tar and feathers, tar and feathers
stifle and stink and thicken
all over this nincompoop
schoolgirl shamed in class
over and over
all over again

Sunlight is timing my days
but behind me the other light
shadows me, shows me
a dark mannikin ahead.
I hurry with arms outstretched
to hold her hurrying
with arms outstretched
past the horizon.

Memory, my good dog, you eat up
the food I have set.
Then we go for a walk.
I have a path in mind;
you have your concerns.
Each course you set
by landmarks I can't discern
hauls at the walk we design
together.

– By Judith Rodriguez (1936-2018)

The Australian poetry world is still reeling – and grieving – after the death of Judith Rodriguez a week ago. She was 82. Her work started appearing in journals and anthologies when she was still a very young woman, so it seems she's been around forever. Not only that, but she was active on the poetry scene to the last; always writing, and sharing her work in print and at readings. She was a generous friend and supporter to many other poets, and was universally loved and respected. A familiar figure behind the mic, particularly in her home town of Melbourne but also all over the country, she attended readings as much to hear other new poetry as to share her own.

Here is a lovely interview and reading from only two months ago, drawing from her last book, The Feather Boy. Do listen! She reads some wonderful stuff. You can read a collection of her poetry on the page – or rather, screen – at her entry in Australian Poetry Library. While you're  there, look up Nu-Plastik Fanfare Red, one of her most popular poems. I think you'll enjoy it too.

A Member of the Order of Australia and the recipient of many literary awards, she was nevertheless completely down-to-earth and lacking in conceit. My personal memories of her are of her energy and humour; her unfailing kindness to me and others; and how clearly and deeply she saw me, even though we were warmly acquainted rather than close friends. That degree of insight must have been one of the gifts which made her such a remarkable poet.

Her entry in Wikipedia is so brief – apart from the long lists of publications and awards – that I'll quote it all (apart from those long lists, which you can find at the link):

Judith Rodriguez was born Judith Catherine Green in Perth and grew up in Brisbane. She was educated at Brisbane Girls Grammar School, and graduated from the University of Queensland with a Bachelor of Arts. She then travelled to England, where she received a Master of Arts from Cambridge University in 1965, where she met her first husband, Colombian Fabio Rodriguez.

She published numerous volumes of poetry, some illustrated by her own woodcuts, edited an anthology and the collected poems of Jennifer Rankin. From 1979 to 1982, she was poetry editor of the literary journal Meanjin, and from 1988 to 1997 she was a poetry editor with the publisher Penguin Australia. The play Poor Johanna, co-written with Robyn Archer, was produced in 1994 and her libretto for Moya Henderson's opera Lindy, about the Azaria Chamberlain disappearance, was performed at the Sydney Opera House in 2002. She was a recipient of the Christopher Brennan Award and taught at La Trobe University (1969–1985) and Deakin University (1998–2003).

Rodriguez died on 22 November 2018. She is survived by her four children and their father, and by her second husband, Tom Shapcott, who she married in 1982.

[Shapcott is a distinguished poet himself.]

Her death notice in one of Australia's leading newspapers, The Sydney Morning Herald, reads (in part):

She was a fine poet and artist, a loyal and valued friend, teacher and mentor to many and a fierce campaigner for human rights.

Her obituary from PEN International (an organisation which uses letter-writing campaigns to help free writers imprisoned for their work or opinions) says:

Judith dedicated her life to the promotion of literature, and the defence of the voiceless.... Professionally, she combined poetry, university teaching, publishing, and printmaking. She sometimes illustrated her poetry with woodcuts and had exhibitions of her prints in Australia and Paris. 

As that last suggests, she was known internationally too, and had taught in overseas as well as Australian universities.

Hers was a very distinctive poetic voice. She was not a confessional poet. She did sometimes write about herself, but not in confessional mode; more because she loved to explore what it is to be human. She often wrote about other people, whether historical or observed in person, and about other forms of life too – trees, mudcrabs, mountains, lakes, birds....

'I write poetry in order to live more fully,' she said.

Material shared in 'The Living Dead' is presented for study and review. Poems, photos and other writings and images remain the property of the copyright owners, where applicable (older poems may be out of copyright). This photo of Judith, Copyright © Di Cousens 2016, was taken at the launch of her book Flares in that year.