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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