Articles – Essays
The Mechanics of Creation
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Article: “The Mechanics of Creation” in:
Imagination in Action: Thoughts on Creativity by painters, sculptors, musicians, poets, novelists, teachers, actors…
The Mercury Press, November 2007.
Pages 34 – 38.
[ISBN: 1-55128-132-5]Carol Malyon – Editor.
Beverley Daurio – Cover, composition and page design
Marjory Smart – Painting on the back cover
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David Livingstone Clink
The Mechanics of Creation.
David Clink was born in Medicine Hat, Alberta, and grew up in West Hartford, Connecticut, and Toronto, Ontario. He is the webmaster of poetrymachine.com, a resource for poets. He is a past Artistic Director of the Art Bar Poetry Series. He is the author of 5 poetry chapbooks, including “One Dozen” published in May 2007. David’s poetry has appeared recently in The Antigonish Review, Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Dalhousie Review, The Fiddlehead, Grain Magazine, and The Literary Review of Canda. He has a poetry collection forthcoming from Tightrope Books in 2008.
The Mechanics of Creation
After the number of poetry readings I have attended, and given, I sometimes think the act of creation should be left to a higher power. But, sometimes one can go to a reading and be mesmerized, or one can produce something that is memorable and original, that says something in a way that has not been done before, and it is for these moments that I live for poetry. This essay that Carol Malyon asked me to write is supposed to be about creativity: how one creates, why one creates, where one gets ideas from, and it is also supposed to compare and contrast the different approaches to the creative process when employing different art forms. Since I am a poet first and foremost, I will wax poetic first.
1. How I Create (the poetry perspective)
When it comes to poetry, most of my writing is done on the bus or subway. I get an idea and I write it down. This leads to other lines and I write these all out in long hand, on a letter-sized yellow figuring pad that I liberated from the storage cabinet in the library where I work. The pad has green lines that are 5/16” apart. I use a pen, not a pencil.
I use the margins of the page, if necessary (it always seems necessary). I keep this copy with me, and work on it for the next few days or longer, editing, adding and subtracting until I can’t do any more or I am in danger of not being able to read my own scribble. The page looks like someone ate alphabet cereal, including the punctuation and proofreading symbols, and then upchucked on the page. It’s not pretty—it looks like garbage I could sell to a museum of modern art for a hefty sum, pun intended.
At this point I’ll either have to hire an exorcist, or I’ll write out a fresh copy, on a figuring pad, in block letters, as clearly as I can, a version of the poem that includes all the changes. I work on this copy for a number of days or more, making many editorial changes until the page is either a ruddy mess, or I can’t think of any more changes to make.
For the first time I enter the poem on the computer. I print it out in Garamond 14 or 16 or 18 pt, because the font is easier to read, usually with a line-spacing of 1.5 or 2. I will, again, make changes to this version, over a week or several weeks, doing the whole editing thing, and I may do this step one more time. Notes: I rarely compose poems on the computer. I do edit on the computer when preparing poems to send out to a market. I also prepare larger font printouts for when I do readings, or when I want to workshop a poem. I usually work on several poems at once.
At a certain point, when I think the poem is pretty much done (what poem is really done?) I will workshop it. I belong to three writing workshops and a reading circle. Getting feedback from people you respect is a great way to improve your poetry; other people will have different perspectives about what works and what doesn’t. I don’t make changes to a poem unless I think the suggestion improves the poem. Sometimes a workshop will homogenize a poem, getting rid of all its rough edges. There is a middle of the road thing that happens, so be aware of this, and make sure the heart of the poem remains intact.
At most workshops the poet reads their poem aloud. You can catch some things at this stage—better to catch it then than on the stage! It is the easiest way to know if something flags or is weak, or tripping on the tongue. Trust your own judgment. When you read a poem aloud in front of a crowd, you can tell, based on your own impatience with it, and the stinking feeling you get when you want to crawl under a goose turd and wish the pain would end, that the poem is too long, that all the exposition at the beginning and/or middle was not necessary. They were necessary when you first wrote the piece, but they did their work. Usually the tendency to go on too long affects beginning writers more than a writer who has been around the writer’s block a few times. For me, poetry is about getting to the heat of an emotion, feeling, moment, mood, idea, and if a line does not serve that purpose, it must go.
2. Why I create (three reasons, two of which are true)
1. I create because Yahtzee and Projectile Vomit belong on the same line.
2. I write poetry to meet women.
3. I began writing poetry in a dedicated fashion when my sister, Carolyn, invited me to join the Algonquin Square Table Poetry Workshop in November 1995. Since then I have tried to improve my writing and to use poetry as an outlet for my creative expression. I want to get what is in my head down on the page, without losing anything. I think I am successful one in every twenty poems or so.
3. Where ideas come from (eight places)
People rarely ask (thank God), “Where do you get your ideas from?” Here are a few places where ideas come from, you may want to check these out:
1. Inside gum that does not stick to most dental work.
2. In and around ant farms.
3. On the surface of lemon drops
and at the base of chimney tops.
4. Beside the shadows of ice sculptures.
5. Underneath dirty clothing collecting in stinky hampers.
6. Inside food that contains MSG.
7. In places where you find cream coloured ponies
and warm woolen mittens.
8. Beneath the retinas of eagles that have had their vision
corrected through a technology reverse engineered
from a possible future.
In summary, ideas come from all sorts of places. Recently I wrote a poem when I was heading home on the bus about a man I saw vacuuming a carpet in an office building. When I was writing, I thought, what is his story? Does he talk to the security guard? What if he doesn’t work there, what if he breaks in, tries to blend in? What if he dons the uniform of a cleaner, and vacuums, and he doesn’t steal anything? What if he has an obsessive compulsive disorder to clean other places, but has no energy afterwards, so his own place starts to turn to rat shit? This is the idea I had and I turned this into a prose poem titled: “Clean.” I later added a second stanza that has him get caught, and the people that ended up catching him wonder why he did this.
4. Seven exercises to aid in the act of creation
Here are a few exercises/suggestions that may help you with your ability to write new, interesting and original poems (they may also help you write uninspired, derivative poems, so watch out!):
1. I write down ideas, phrases, thoughts on scraps of paper, most of which are disconnected, and write a poem that combines a number of these. The result is usually something that you would not have come up with if you started with a blank piece of paper, usually something very inventive, and unusual. I wrote a piece in January 2002, which combined a bunch of these, titled: “My Latest Poem.” I was doing this to see if I could get a good poem out of it, and, in all modesty, without beating around the bush, I can proudly say: “Mission accomplished.”
2. I have taken a whack of poems that are so bad a 15 year-old performance poet with acne would disown them, and I excised the best one or two lines from each poem, and created a poem from them, titled: “Beyond the Eastern Edges of the World.” This worked out well.
3. “The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises from Poets Who Teach” (Harper Collins) by Robin Behn and Chase Twitchell has a number of exercises. I recommend picking up a copy and trying some! I used an exercise by Jim Simmerman to write a poem titled: “Black Sun.”
4. Take paid workshops where an instructor gets you to write. For example, Stuart Ross has an all-day workshop called a “poetry boot camp,” that he does once or twice a year, and is taught usually in downtown Toronto just above This Ain’t the Rosedale Library. Find a workshop in your area and try it out!
5. Two words: Poetry Magnets.
6. Try writing in one of the poetic forms you have not tried. Some examples of poetic forms include villanelle, glossa, pantoum, sestina, prose poem, ghazal, and Sonnet. There are books available that go into detail about the various poetic forms.
7. Become a member of a poetry workshop or circle that meets regularly. You may find yourself composing a poem the night before or the morning of, but at least you wrote a poem! There is nothing like a deadline to compel one to action.
5. Different approaches, different art forms
Part of the purpose of this essay is to compare the creative process to more than one artistic form, and there are other things I have done in an artistic manner that may have some relevance. I am the webmaster of poetrymachine.com, a resource for poets. I was the Artistic Director of the Art Bar Poetry Series for 3 years, ending in June 2005. I run a cheese-doodle contest at Eeriecon, a convention held annually in the Spring in Niagara Falls (on the American side). I am co-publisher of believe your own press, a poetry chapbook publisher. All of these endeavors require different acts of creation. As with all of these, there is a framework that one has for artistic expression, like the proverbial artist that begins with a blank canvas, or the proverbial writer who starts with a blank page.
When taking on a creative process, you may want to ask, “Is there a framework?” If yes, what is it, and do you have to strictly follow it? Is there wiggle room, and more importantly, do you want to wiggle? And, why are there always questions? The framework for the Art Bar Poetry Series is that there are 3 features every week, along with the occasional theme nights. I organized an annual theme night called “The Dead Poets Society Night” where a group of poets each read for 5-6 minutes from a dead poet. I also organized an “Art Bar Poetry Idol,” and asked Paul Vermeersch and Sandra Kasturi to host it with me, where we listened to the work of poets and gave constructive criticism. Even given a framework, given bounds or limitations, one can be creative within these limits. The cheese-doodle sculptures turned into a contest, with themes, and prizes for the winner. With the press, Myna Wallin and I choose who we want to publish, we also edit chapbooks, and invite guest editors as well. We have tried different formats, for example, not a standard 8½” x 11” folded sheet, which makes chapbooks the standard size of 8½” x 5½”, but ones that are square, and taller, thinner ones. We work with Carleton Wilson, who has designed the books for us through Junction Design and Typography (www. junctionbooks.com).
The creative process is hindered/helped by things that take you away from your creative writing, things like writing grants, organizing events, readings. The business side of writing can get in the way of writing as well. In starting “believe your own press”, we got a master business licence from the Ontario Government, allowing us to open a business bank account, and be able to deposit cheques made out to “believe your own press.” With poetrymachine.com, I had to get the domain name, and register the site, and design the site, and work on the content. Grant writing itself is a lot of work, and doing this for a series requires financial statements, and an accounting of the previous year’s work, and plans for the future.
In conclusion, it is not necessary to know the mechanics of creation to create, but every little bit helps. Don’t let too many things get in your way of your reading and writing time, or whatever it is you do to help you create. Keep at it, and I wish you success with your creations.
