Art Chowder March | April 2018, Issue 14 | Page 36

On good nights there were maybe ten readers . I started going every week . Soon , poetry became the axle my week revolved around . I started competing in the slams . A poetry slam is a competitive poetry reading in which performers are judged by the audience . Competing gave me a jump-start to putting in more work on poems .

It took me awhile to become one of the top poetry slammers in the scene . I wasn ’ t a natural performer . I had no idea what to do with my hands and my enunciation was terrible . After my first season I ’ d managed to place third in the finals , trailing behind the top duo who ’ d been battling it out all year , Zack Graham and Kurt Olson . That summer , as the slam took a three month hiatus , I spent a whole month and a half working on only one poem , while I stayed with a friend ’ s parents in Portland . I ’ d walk from their house downtown and say lines to myself , thinking of what I liked and what I didn ’ t like , and letting the poem come to me . I practiced that poem more than I ’ d ever practiced before , repeating it again and again as clearly as I could . Coming home , I won the first slam of that season .
What are the best ways to engage with poetry ? It can mean reading a book , or going to a book club or a reading , or showing up to an open mic and reading something you wrote . Poetry shouldn ’ t be introduced to people as something they have to understand and analyze before they ’ ve had the chance to start liking it . Critical reading is important , but we need to encounter poetry for the sake of enjoying it before we learn to take it apart . Otherwise we miss the point . Imagine the poem as directions to get to some emotional / cognitive / empathetic / spiritual landscape . No matter how well you understand the directions , it ’ s important to trudge through the mud to get there .
What other interests do you have and does this inform your work ? Oh , this is a question that could go for days . I ’ m interested in everything . I take inspiration from anything . For example , I really enjoy playing chess . There are many ways to take inspiration from it . You could start off simply by thinking about how to make a poem about chess , about the relationship between two people playing chess . Maybe one of them is learning how to play , but they ’ re learning something about themselves in the process . There are tons of great metaphors in chess — pawns advancing to become queens — pawns being sacrificed . You could write a persona poem from the perspective of what ’ s called a “ poisoned pawn .”
But we might go deeper . I might think of chess strategy , and see how that can inform my generative process . I ask , “ How can I think this game of poetry is like a game of chess ”? Well , there are structural parallels . Every line in a poem is like a move in chess ; it has to advance toward your goal and play toward your advantages . After a few lines or a few moves , once the opening is done , you need a plan for this thing that ’ s taking shape . Then you could take that idea a step further and compare writing exercises to speed chess , in which you have a clock going and only get three to five minutes to play the entire game . You could set up a clock and say , “ Can I write a twenty-line poem in five minutes , where every line has purpose ”? Part of the work is learning how to play well in the first place , and another part is learning to achieve the mindset to play well fast . You could use that to generate a ton of first drafts . Later , you could return to the best drafts and work more . Of course , given five minutes you wouldn ’ t craft a masterpiece , but you might start one . When my writing has been blocked , this is one of the exercises I use to break out of it .
www . carolschmauder . com

Carol Schmauder

F i n e A r t
Avenue West Gallery
907 W . Boone , Suite c Spokane , Washington
509-325-4809
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