POETRY WORKSHOP
SETTING IDEAS free
Alison Chisholm explores a well-crafted poem with a sculpture theme
Alison Chisholm
Sometimes the idea for a new poem slides gently into being. Sometimes it crashes through the poet’s consciousness. Sometimes a combination of circumstances lead up to its birth.
For poet Barbara Mosse of Emsworth, Hampshire, a quote from Michelangelo ignited an idea that started in a workshop discussion. The discussion was on meta poetry, poems about poetry, and how most poets seem inspired to write them.
The comment was made that it’s difficult to write an original meta poem, as they’ve been covered so frequently.
That’s when Michelangelo’s words splashed across Barbara Mosse’s mind, and quoting them inspired the start of the poem. But where the artist reports seeing the angel and knowing the need to carve, here the poem – the angel’s equivalent – is the narrator, urging the poet to give it the words that will make it sing. With a neatly crafted metaphor, the poem uses parallel vocabulary, with a block of verbal marble that waits for my sculptor to liberate it.