pi & anne

As a creative, I am very often torn.

a) Between writing as words come to me and the idea of a writing theory which asks to be applied, for example. This includes that I need to go meta on myself and my process. Which means I must remember that theory, understand (how to use) it and check the boxes or at least have an overview.

b) And people believe that poetry is either all biographical or not at all, and

c) that the writer “knows what they are doing”.

Oh well. Oh well, oh well.

There are some assumptions and ideas in there, and I have personally been wrapped up in them, and sometimes adopted them from my surrounding, too.

If I were to write down my knowledge about the haiku genre, you would quickly notice the page wouldn’t get filled fast, or a lot. Because. I keep reading about haiku theory, essays, blog posts, books. I keep listening to podcasts about it. I talk with people about it. But I still cannot remember what wabi-sabi means, or ba. Ma is quite clingy, and vertical axis, and cut, and juxtaposition in my brain, but not enough that I could write about it in depth, remember who said what about them, which poets focused on them or contributed much to them. My brain is like a sieve, and it needs a lot of repetition. Still details will slip through. I can write about impressions and taste and ideas that I have though, and I try to use that brain of mine to shape these. My brain is imprecise, jumpy, excited or bored easily. I learn fast, I hyperfocus, I forget, go to the next.

I write in the same way.

I appreciate all the theory, but it helps me more to rely on my own flow. I write much better intuitively than when I “sit down to write”. I write more gripping when I forget about theory to a great extent.

Also. In some sense, even when I write about a fictional setting or person, this setting or person has something that is dear to me or expresses something that is of great importance to me. Which means it might not be 1:1 realism, and at the same time it expresses very well a realism of need, emotion or idea. In this sense, anything that I write is personal, even if it is about someone else, and might not be strictly biographical. Yet it’s a biographically emotional truth, so to say.

About the idea that a writer knows what they are doing: erm, I don’t.

I’m surprised that a quirky line in a conversation seems to be a great haiku. Or when hours and hours of sincere editing results in a stiffled, bleak, empty blah. I don’t know what I’m doing, I’m just doing… something. And I do it best, when I let go of plans and fences. When I don’t force anything.
That’s me. Other poets, other ways of responding to the world, other brains, other resources.

Oh, and a sincere wish I have to make: to all the writers of essays and theories out there,

please, just please take care to not use your essay to show off your amount of difficult vocabulary and language skills.

Sentences can be long AND short. To write understandably and clear and to the point is an ability, and a haiku poet is able to do that (at least I thought so). It would makes your writing accessible to many, many people. I have joked with a fellow poet about that, they said they needed three years to read a certain book, and I told them I might still have it at my deathbed then. I don’t expect to finish it.

I read more often now that people aim to be inclusive. It should be no surprise that we can exclude by the way we write. At least for essays, which are purely about transporting thoughts, which are no novel, no poem, no piece of art, which are rather close to journalistic writing, it would be nice to aim for being understandable.

We don’t lose anything by this.

PS, because I forget a lot, I tend to repeat myself. So if I have already written about this here, that’s how it is. I will repeat myself for sure again, just that you know :D.