Line breaks
Poems are created out of a combination of words, punctuation, and blank space.
It’s easy to overlook blank space when we think about poetry but, in many ways, it’s just as important for our experience of a poem as the words that we read. In fact, ‘blank’ isn’t quite the right word for the space around the words of a poem because this space is full of weight and rich meaning.
Blank space gives poems shape. It creates lines and stanzas. If words are the building blocks of a poetic room, then blank space defines its form and structure.
Blank space gives poems time. It gives readers an opportunity to pause and breathe. It interacts with the poem’s punctuation and its words to create rhythm and movement.
When we write poetry, we write into, against, and through blank space.
Task (20-30 minutes)
It’s time now to start shaping the draft of your poem, ‘The View from Here’, so that it engages with the blank space of the page.
Consider what kind of shape you’d like to give your poem. As you do so, you may want to consider some of the following questions:
- Do you want to organise your poem into a series of regular lines and stanzas (just as ‘Patagonia’ is arranged in quatrains, or four-line stanzas, and a couplet)?
- Would you like it to have stanzas of different lengths?
- Do you want it to be a single stanza?
- Do you want to use a familiar form (such as a sonnet) or would you rather choose a freer arrangement of lines?
- Are there particular words that you want to put at the end or at the beginning of lines?
- Do you want to put punctuation at the end of your lines, or do you want your words to flow from the end of one line to the beginning of another?
Using a word processor, experiment with different ways of shaping your poem until you find one that feels right to you. Remember, you don’t have to give reasons for your decision – just go with your instincts. Hold back from sharing your poem for the moment and use your course journal to record your draft.
How did you find this task? Share your experience below.
Over the next few Steps, you’ll be able to share your poem with other Learners on the course for a peer review exercise. You’ll give and receive constructive feedback on each other’s work to further develop your skills in reading and writing poetry.
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