Poetry Pals - Week 16 - White Space Poetry

Looking at using the space around words to help with form and meaning.

Hello poetry people,

This week over at

Poetry Pals

we have been looking at ‘white space’. The space that surrounds our poems and the weight/timing it gives them. Using that space to say something. We looked at Kate Clanchy who suggests that it is helpful to think of the white space in a poem as time and space.

Our task…

Your Writing Prompt:

Kate Clanchy, … (gives) a writing prompt:

“Try using the white space to slow down the action in your own poem. Think of a scene which happens slowly in your imagination….Try to think of the white space as resistant, heavy, something that you are pushing against or forging a path through….

Using a Simon Armitage poem as our guide, she suggests choosing a bodily or vivid scene. An exact moment.

“Detail it in just a few spare images…

Try laying it out down the page using lots of space….

You’ll need a satisfying metaphor to close.”

Now we are back to my comfort zone. I was rather excited about this one. Using space and form to convey more than the words - right up my alley. I like experimenting like this (see one of my previous posts on this topic here). I got right to it.

I have a bad chest, an infection caught whilst visiting my mother in law in hospital after she had a bad fall. I didn’t expect to pick something up from the hospital and I was very careful to not take anything in. Anyhow, breathing is an effort and my brain isn’t working too well so trying to find the words so describe it was also an effort. I gave it a try though. It doesn’t fulfil the brief as no metaphor to finish off with. But hey ho I tried.

Photo by Europeana on Unsplash

---

Breathing is Vital 

shallow, quick, small,
almost 
           imperceptible 
                                movements 

sharplyin 

long drawn           o      u        t 

in 

                              o       u         t 

ribs raising
effort required
to 
    suck 
	in 
                 the
	         vital

oxygen

shallow, quick, small


in

                            o     u       t


in

repeat, repeat, repeat.

---

This next one I just needed to print out so I could get the formatting right. I needed to draw those slides. Of course I crumpled it carrying it down the stairs as hubby stopped me to ask about the positioning of curtain rails and I got extra distracted. I was going to do watercolours over it too, but we have been called away to see MIL in hospital again and I won’t have time. But I think it hit the brief well; crease and all.

Photo by Jason Mavrommatis on Unsplash

---

If you have enjoyed my ramblings I’d love for you to click the ❤️. It pleases the social algorithm, lets others know there’s something interesting here, as well as letting me know you liked it and giving me a little virtual hug. Without virtual hugs I have been know to get sad 😜. Shares are good too and a comment buoys me up even more 😁 A comment of what you liked, what you didn’t etc would be most gratefully appreciated.