Writers Workshop

Writing Poems That Tell a Story by Siddharth Kartragadda copyright 2002 all rights reserved

Why write poetry in the story form? Because people need a story and characters to keep reading. It is the story that pulls in readers right in the first page and keeps them reading more and more. And it’s the characters of a story that provide the additional impetus in keeping the readers interested. So how does one inculcate these elements, traditionally associated with prose, into poetry?

It is sad that most poetry today is purely random thought, disconnected from one poem to the next, without any real flow of idea and theme from one stanza to the next and from one poem to the next. When Dark Rooms – A Novel in Verse (Publish America, 2002), my first collection of poetry, was published recently, it had collected dust for nearly fifteen years. Most of the poems in the collection had been published in various anthologies, but never gained any real recognition. It is sad that a lot of very good poetry goes into making these anthologies, but even good poetry gets lost in the midst of a million other poems.

I learnt a few lessons. Firstly, for achieving recognition in the world of poetry, individual poems, firstly, have to be consolidated into a collection. Secondly, the collection has to have a theme so it interests a particular audience. For example, poetry written about a particular place or a town would interest people who have lived there or can attribute to the place. Thirdly, especially if the poetry has to do with inner feelings, which is what most poetry presumably is, try to show the very same emotions through a set of characters embedded in a story. The poems in Dark Rooms would have gone to the grave with me had it not been for one little change. I rewrote them as a story – the story of Gopal. Thus, it is essential to inculcate poetry into the framework of a theme, or even better, a story, and to present poetry through the characters of the story.

So, how does one go about writing poetry as a story? To begin with, come up with a story. The storyline does not have to be as involved as a novel but it should go with the general mood of your poetry. Since it is difficult to write new poems in the framework of a pre-conceived storyline, and since most poetry is just pure thought, it would be easier to fit a set of existing poems into the story. In other words, write the poems first as your own feelings and thoughts and then fit them into the characters of a story.

Once you have a story line and the required poems that would go into the story, filter out poems that are completely outside the scope of the story. Take the remaining poems and fit them into the thought process of the characters in the story. Distribute the poems over various characters, focusing on two or three characters that drive the story. Tweak the poems to make them flow with the story. Even write additional poems that act as a glue to bring all the poems seamlessly together. Sometimes, you will see that the glue-poems come out even better than the actual poems.

Focus on the opening poem and the climactic one and make sure these are the best writing you have ever done, that they leave an impact on the reader’s mind. It is the first poem that sets the mood for the rest of the book, and it is the last poem that the reader will eventually remember, so these have to be very well written, precise and evocative.

The starting poems should set the mood of the book (in my book, I set the mood of a family’s lost grandeur) and should sum the book up, setting the reader up for what to expect. Here, I present the opening stanza of Dark Rooms:

In the study, now dark and deserted
The rusted gramophone tip
Lay stuck to the last track
Of the record, the drum to the side,
Like the head of its proud master,
When death came to him,
One of those clear-blue summer
Afternoons in Hyderabad.

The last poem should leave a lasting impression on the reader’s mind, so the reader will remember your book for a long time.

Finally, break up the book into two or three sections, just like in a novel. And then, you have a story in verse.

All these processes are clearly illustrated in my book Dark Rooms. For more details of the book, please visit http://darkrooms.latest-info.com/

Dark Rooms
ISBN:1-59129-503-3. Publish America. August 2002. Trade Paper.152 Pages.
Available in all leading bookstores including Amazon, B&N and Walmart

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