Little Workshop: The Poetry of Place

START HERE: Before the first meeting, read the intro lecture. We’ll take it from there.

weekend one intro to the topic/looking at readings, writing exercise, take home prompts

weekend two show, tell, discuss: your writing, your favorite examples of “place”in your life, take home prompts

weekend three show, tell, feedback: your writing, open discussion on writing techniques or subject matter, take home prompts

weekend four show, tell, discuss: your writing, how to keep engaging

What does it mean to be here, now? What does it mean for a place to have an identity? How do our identities exchange energy with the space we occupy, be that a room or a neighborhood or a planet? We know that witnessing place activates our psyche and our spirit; the poetry of place helps us unpack this dynamic.

Just so we’re on the same page, when I say poetry, I do mean what you think of as verse (imagine lines that stop long before reaching the right side of the page), but I truly believe that poetry is a way of thinking and putting together that you can apply to any genre of writing or act of life. So if you came here looking to write some poems, great. But if you’re more of a prose writer or person who simply likes writing in their journal, this is for you, too.

But since I am a poet by trade and I think poetry is so much fun to teach, let’s set the mood to poetry for now. My favorite definition of poetry actually comes from a book on architecture and community planning from the ’70s called A Pattern Language. In comparing buildings to poems, the authors claim:

It is possible to put patterns together in such a way that many many patterns overlap in the same physical space.…In a poem this density creates illumination….The connection not only illuminates the words, but also illuminates our actual lives.

It’s easy to agree that the height of the ceilings in your house affect the airflow, but what about how the line length in your poem affects the way you stress certain syllables? I want you to stop for a moment and think of a poem not as a work of art, but as a work of architecture.

This is also a good definition of place in general, not just an architecture (made of stone or words for otherwise): many, many patterns overlapping the same physical space. Personal, public, biological, historical, sensory, relational. From the textures of leaves to the dappled light that washes over them, to the scent of pine that surrounds everything and is made possible by the level of humidity in the air to which the warmth of your own body contributes and responds to.

Now for fun, let’s combine that definition with my favorite definition of metaphor. In the eponymous lecture from her book Madness, Rack, and Honey, poet Mary Ruefle defines metaphor as “simply an exchange of energy between two things.” She goes on:

If you believe that metaphor is an event, and not just a literary term denoting comparison, then you must conclude a certain philosophy arises: that everything in the world is connected….it unites the world by its very premise—that things connect and exchange energy.

There you have it. The mystery of poetry is solved. We can go home now, right?

I especially like these definitions because they remind us that relation is both emotional and technical. Yes, there is how you relate to your environment in terms of your role (caretaker vs. destroyer, for example— to make a binary of it), but there is also the fact that you are sitting up perpendicular to the ground, facing east (or whatever direction you are). That also has significance. I also like to define poetry using a discipline outside of poetry to illustrate Ruefle’s point about interconnectedness.

Metaphor is instructive because it shows us that a connection can be made between any two things. Nothing is off the table. Everything is possible in metaphor because everything is connected. Especially if you embrace the idea of layering patterns and textures and life experiences. That’s pretty cool.

THE ROLE OF TIME

A major factor in poetry of place is time. In fact, place is defined by time. Your backyard at 4 pm is not your backyard at 4 am. Time is change and change defines space. Time affects the conditions.

“Richard McGuire’s Here is the story of a corner of a room and of the events that have occurred in that space over the course of hundreds of thousands of years.” I’ve lifted that copy straight from the dust jacket of this incredible graphic novel.

See some pages here: https://www.richard-mcguire.com/new-page-4.

McGuire uses traditional elements like thought bubbles, captions, and time-stamps in combination with “interlocking panels” to depict multiple events happening in the same place at different times in history (past, present, and future, millions of years in each direction), allowing the novel to make a powerful statement about the cyclical, non-linear nature of time. Through these voyeuristic time-traveling spreads, we are reminded that the historical energy of a place affects the mood of the present, that human culture is in constant evolution, and that any one point in spacetime contains infinite narratives. His book is a great example of the poetry of place transcending genre.

McGuire asks us to evaluate our relationship with time, with place, with event, and that is what we’re here to, in fact, do.

COMPONENTS OF APPROACH

Observe: description of the setting (via observations made at a specific date and time)

Meditate: relationships — you to the setting, the setting to you, things to each other, the setting to history/biology (the mind wanders)

Incorporate: found language, signage, conversations, onomatopoeia; history/biology of the space (known and imagined

Draft as much as you can get down at first. Don’t stress about perfection. Don’t censor yourself — you get enough of that in life. Just put the pen to paper and move. You can always cross it out later.

Mostly, all poems of place include description and meditation (which can sound like a stream of consciousness or take the form of judgments and declarations, depending on the speaker) which brings in the speaker’s role, their personal history, and/or the political or social history of the given location/environment. This may be done in any manner of narrative modes, from imagistic to truly narrative, but of course, the best poetry juggles both. My advice is to speak in your natural voice. Use your own POV, as unmasked as you can manage, even if it doesn’t sound “poetic.”

THE LANGUAGE OF TIME

What is the language of place? What words do we associate with it? How do we use it? Poetry of place is more of a mode than a form (modes have identifiable shared features, forms have formulas). More often than not, we see a lot of image in poems of place—vivid descriptions of physical surroundings. Image is a major vehicle of meaning in poetry—it’s often the first thing we bond with. But the most basic indicators of place are locative words like in/on/near/above/here.

Here lies Peter.

This is where we said I love you.

This is where a man shoved his flag into the soil and called it “mine.”

On this mountain.

In this building.

30,000 feet above the Mojave.

To that, you’ll add visual details—imagery. What did it look like? What did it smell like? Was it cold or humid. And what did the people there say to each other and was there violence or hugging? Stolen glances or graffiti? Description text goes here

1. Describe the broadest stretch of landscape you can see from where you are right now. Use as much detail as you can manage. Now describe the smallest and closest thing you can see/touch. Use as much detail as you can manage.

2. Hike somewhere and write or record a few lines every time you stop along the trail. Or, take a walk in the city and record a few lines at every other street corner (or pick some another waypoint that you can hit at a reliable frequency).

3. Choose a corner of your house (or any point in space, really) and imagine it (through writing) at different times in both the past and the future.

4. Write about the mark you’ve made on a place both energetically and physically, then turn it around: How has that place is affected you physically, emotionally, psychologically?

5. Write a poem with the title “Self-Portrait in the Town Where I Was Born.” (This exercise riffs on a poem with that title by the poet Jake Adam York.)

6. Write a poem about a setting using only observation and comparison. Then write a second poem about the same thing but this time, insert yourself into the setting.

7. Journal/essay about what the idea of “place” means to you. What images come to mind? How has your relationship to environment figured in your life? Has it mattered a lot? Have you never really thought about it?

8. Visit or think about your absolute favorite place in the world and write and ode (a poem of celebration), but

9. Visit or think about a place you’ve experienced that left you with a lot of questions and now, in your writing, try to answer them either with your imagination or with research.

10. Go somewhere at night that you would usually only see in the day (make sure you’re comfortable with the level of risk) and write about the experience in the moment.