Narratives

I assume that people will go on composing single lyric poems until the sun goes nova. But whether the collection of single lyrics has much of a future is a different matter. I don’t mean I won’t wait for my favourite poets to produce their next collection which I will buy and enjoy, I’m just wondering about all the other collections, staggering under the weight of their overwritten blurbs, endorsed by this or that famous name no one out side the small precious circle has heard of, which I read once and never reread.

As a reader, my test of a poem is whether or not I’m willing to write it out, in long hand, into the book in which I keep poems I like or which interest me. And this twelve months there have been few new entries by living poets.

Especially in Australian journals, I’ve started noticing the little tricks everyone (inc me) is using that makes their piece of writing “poetry”. And it's starting to make writing a single poem almost impossible. Which isn't a bad thing as that's not what this project is about.

In terms of money spent and value gained (for a reader), the narrative seem the way to go. And since that’s what I’m working on, it seems that right about now I should be thinking about how a narrative, told in “poetry” would differ from a narrative told as prose.

So map the territory. (And don’t forget Lawman and the 'roman a tiroirs' or however you spell it.