The guest poet for Monday's reading was Sandy Shreve, who read a selection of her formal poetry. Among the forms represented in her reading were the triolet, the palindrome, the sonnet, and the pantoum. With Kate Braid, Sandy Shreve co-edited In Fine Form: The Canadian Book of Form Poetry—an anthology we use at VIU in the creative writing department as a text book, so it was rewarding to hear her thoughts on formal verse in person.
We talked about form mostly, and these are some of the points I took away from the discussion:
1) Formal poetry is not dead or dying out. During the discussion that followed her reading, the question came up of the validity of formal poetry in a world where performance poetry is in vogue. In my humble opinion, formal poetry would almost be the best kind of poetry to be adapted for performance. Think about it: conventions such as rhythm, repetition, and rhyme are easy to hear when performed. In fact, that's probably where these conventions came from—an oral tradition.
2) While some formal structures lend themselves better to some topics, they don't have to be restricted in this way. For example: the topic of the sonnet is often love, but it doesn't have to be. Ghazals lend themselves to both religious and romantic themes, but they could be used for anything really.
3) The most important message I got from Sandy Shreve was that there isn't anything that we "should" write about. She stressed this several times. While there do seem to be patterns in what is popular within the establishment of the poetry community, this should not dictate what we write about or how we write. We should write about what we want to write about. We should tell our stories.
As you can see, I was fairly engaged! Haha I would recommend these events for anyone! Even if you are not that into poetry, or if you think that what I just went over was not your style, that's okay. Even if you're just curious, or even if you want to get out more! These events are a lot of fun.
We talked about form mostly, and these are some of the points I took away from the discussion:
1) Formal poetry is not dead or dying out. During the discussion that followed her reading, the question came up of the validity of formal poetry in a world where performance poetry is in vogue. In my humble opinion, formal poetry would almost be the best kind of poetry to be adapted for performance. Think about it: conventions such as rhythm, repetition, and rhyme are easy to hear when performed. In fact, that's probably where these conventions came from—an oral tradition.
2) While some formal structures lend themselves better to some topics, they don't have to be restricted in this way. For example: the topic of the sonnet is often love, but it doesn't have to be. Ghazals lend themselves to both religious and romantic themes, but they could be used for anything really.
3) The most important message I got from Sandy Shreve was that there isn't anything that we "should" write about. She stressed this several times. While there do seem to be patterns in what is popular within the establishment of the poetry community, this should not dictate what we write about or how we write. We should write about what we want to write about. We should tell our stories.
As you can see, I was fairly engaged! Haha I would recommend these events for anyone! Even if you are not that into poetry, or if you think that what I just went over was not your style, that's okay. Even if you're just curious, or even if you want to get out more! These events are a lot of fun.
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