Have you noticed how many people, when poetry is mentioned, say that they are not intelligent enough to understand it? Have you at times felt that poetry belongs to other, more intelligent people?
 
This Women’s Month, the AVBOB Poetry Project pays tribute to the life and work of Petra Müller (1935-2021) – a poet, editor and teacher who believed that poetry should be accessible to everyone and comes from the simplest, most ordinary things. Petra produced seven collections of Afrikaans poems, and in 2006 she published Night Crossing (Tafelberg), an extraordinary collection of poems in English. At the time, she explained that she started writing in English because she had four grandchildren living abroad, none of whom could read her work in Afrikaans.
 
This month, we share a few pieces of advice that Petra embodied during her life as a poet and poetry editor and passed on to younger writers:
 

• Pay attention to what is closest to you, especially natural phenomena. Every stream and every stone you touch has a story of its own. Some of the most lasting poems have been inspired by a fleeting event, the sighting of a bird or an animal, a cloud or a wave on the sea.

 

• Be curious about everything. Pay attention not only to important events but also to the most ordinary speech, to the old stories that people love to repeat. Remember that some of the greatest epics in the history of world literature started out as gossip stories. Myths are alive, and they speak to us about parts of ourselves that never change. Mythological characters are our contemporaries and still have much to teach us.

 

• Remember that poems need some silence in which to move towards you. Creativity grows in silence. If you allow enough space in your life, poems will start approaching you when you least expect it. Find a quiet place, perhaps among stones or close to water. Poems often appear close to these elemental places.

 

• To write a poem is to be seized. It is a kind of enchantment. A line comes to you, and the next moment the thing just keeps growing. While that poem has a hold of you, time passes and you are not aware of it. All the poem needs is some silence in which to move towards you. Creativity grows in silence. That is why I say that writing a poem isn’t really work. You just have to be willing to write it. Then creativity will become your companion; your friend for life.

 

• Each poem you write has a life of its own. It contains life at both ends: on the side where it is written and transmitted and on the side where it is read and received. That is why it is important to keep listening and returning to your work. The earliest poems in all languages were meant to be sung, and today many of the strongest poems still have a musicality to them, whether they use rhyme or not. Think of your poem as something that will be heard by an audience, like a piece of music. If you want to make poetry, you need to do it with the simplicity and self-sufficiency of a pebble or a drop of water – an object as perfected by nature.

 
In the next few days, see if you can remember a story that was passed on to you when you were a child – something that moved or excited you. See if it contains a spark that you can feed until it becomes a poem.
 
Photo credit: Philip de Vos
 
Remember that the AVBOB Poetry Competition reopened on 1 August 2023. Visit our website regularly at https://www.avbobpoetry.co.za/ for editing tips and advice as well as updates about upcoming workshops.