A Quote by Allison Joseph
I find it hard to write poems in reaction to world/national events unless there's a way in that's so evident to me that I can't deny the urge to write about such events. It takes me a while to gather the evidence, you know?
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My poems are certainly in the lyric tradition, but perhaps a reader can tell me more precisely who I am as a poet. How can I be so old and not know? I have always been deeply grateful for the urge to write, the desire to create, that's certain. Writing has always been the way I make sense of life. Perhaps my poems define me, rather than the other way around. They do constantly surprise me.
I don't mind being labeled as a political songwriter. I've chosen to do that. What really annoys me is being dismissed as a political songwriter. That really pains me, because life isn't all about love; it's not all about politics, either. It's a beautiful mixture of events that absolutely baffle you, and you think, "Why can't I do something about that?", whether those events are in your bedroom, or out there in the wide world. In our daily lives we engage with them at different times, and I'm trying to write about the whole human experience, or my perspective on it anyway.
It takes me a while to figure things out, doesn't it?" Edilio grinned. "Do me a favor. When you find Astrid, repeat that to her, word for word, the part about how it takes you a while. Then remember her exact reaction and tell me.
The single best piece of advice I give to aspiring writers is to always write about things that they know. I suggest that they write about people and places and events and conflicts they are familiar with. That way their writing will be real and hopefully readers will respond to it. I try to take my own advice.
I write to invite the voices in, to watch the angel wrestle, to feel the devil gather on its haunches and rise. I write to hear myself breathing. I write to be doing something while I wait to be called to my appointment with death. I write to be done writing. I write because writing is fun.
I sit and I write automatically. I don't really try to write. My subconscious mind takes over and writes the songs for me. Songs come very easily for me. When I'm inspired, it takes me 20 minutes to write a song.
We write to understand our deepest secrets to ourselves, to understand. We write in an outpouring of love. We write in secret, either for publication or for a journal no one will see, or we write poems to be privately printed for the eyes of friends alone - this is not our choice. The urge is to create. The outcome belongs to God.
We always seem to be surprised by events, especially by catastrophes, but also by wonderful events. Look at 1990, the year that the Soviet Union collapsed and apartheid in South Africa collapsed and the Berlin Wall came down. I don't know anyone who foresaw those events. It seems to me that as a species we are constantly trying to adapt ourselves to the unexpected. In the meantime, we talk as if we are in control, and we're not. This seems to me to be the truth about the twentieth century.
It takes me a very, very long time to write a story, to write a piece of fiction, whatever you call the fiction that I write. I just go about it blindly, feeling my way towards what it has to be.
I do bring my teaching together with my writing. I make students write in class, and do the same prompts I give them. I'm always on the lookout for teaching poems - poems that inspire me and my students to write poems in response.
Many poets write books. They'll tell you: Well, I've got my next book, but there are two poems I need to write, one about x, one about y. This is a wonder to me.
I was taught that poems don't end, they just kind of stop. There's never an ending to a poem; it's a continuation for later. When I write, I write for me, and I write in poetic form.
Not write what you know, but know what you write. If you write about a world before, after, or other than this one, enter that world completely. Search it to find your deepest longings and most terrible fears. Let imagination carry you as far as it may, as long as you recount the voyage with excitement and wonder. But this is the most important rule: write the book you most long to read.
Not all the songs are real events, but I do write about stuff that is close to my heart and it comes out one way or another.
It is a transition, from modelling to singing, but for me it's a natural progression. The modelling was something I did to travel the world and make some money and end up doing what I want to do. It was a way for me to go gather the experience to write an album and now sing about it.
I write... sonnets... and writing sonnets is boring. You have to find rhymes; you have to write hendecasyllables; so after a while, I get bored and my drawer is overflowing with unfinished short poems.
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