[New-Poetry] Time to write?

[Suzanne Burns]

I find the Frank O'Hara approach works well for me-- writing poems when I
can, over lunch if necessary.  I find I thrive on activity and change, and
tend to write more when I am juggling a lot of things or when I m
travelling.

I am not sure how much this is due o me having no other choice:  my life
and my schedule tends to be insane.  Tech writing for a living has forced me
to be organized ona level I never thought possible-- if Tuesday evening is
the only evening this week when I will have some breathing space and time to
think about poetry, I am very motivated to use that time well.

As far residencies go, I have never believed that "time to write" is really
what they are about.  I mean if you have the time to go to the MacDowell
Colony, you also have the time to put up a "do not disturb" sign and hole up
in your study.  If you have people in your life who don't care about
breaking into your time, then you have a whole nuther kind of problem imho.


Residencies to me are more about having an excuse to go off to some very
pretty locale, and meet and socialize with other writers and artists and
learn from that interaction.  Time spent in that way can be very
intoxicating-- VSC was a great place to meet all kinds of people, and it was
instrumental in inspiring me to take up visual art as well as poetry (I was
modelling for all of the artists, and ended up learning to paint in the
process starting when Selina Trieff suggested that I take the class instead
of modelling).  That kind of experience and interaction is priceless.

I have learned from experience that I do not thrive on isolation.  I did the
Greek island thing (actually it wasn't half as isolated as Jack Gilbert's
poetry maks it sound); I did the hermit thing.  And I ended up writing the
same poem over and over. Throw me in the middle of life:  that's where I
belong.  And even if I have no time at all, I will find a way to make it all
work, even if that means training my readers to expect fragments.  :-)

Suzanne




On 6/11/06, Richard Wilsnack <rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu> wrote:
>
> David Graham's "poet in residence" message, and the correspondence
> concerning the Richard Hugo House, raise a chronic question for creative
> writing in general:
> How much does it help/impede the writing process to have extended time
> available for writing?  Or, in contrast, how much does it help/impede
> writing to have to
> write, as David says, "in the cracks of a 14 hour work day"? I suspect
> that the (un)availability of much "free" time works differently not only
> for different types of writing (say, novels vs. lyric poetry), but also
> for people with different personalities. Many writers, I suspect, hate
> deadlines yet work best when deadlines beset them. Any comments on the
> benefits/woes of having abundant/scarce time for writing?
>
> Richard W. Wilsnack
> rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu
>
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>



-- 
"Start with your identity, which is a combination of your assets and what
your friends mean when they discuss 'the trouble with you,' polish that, and
you have style."

--Quentin Crisp
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