Until the end of November, aspiring South African poets will be entering their best words into the annual AVBOB Poetry Competition, which offers attractive cash prizes.
 
Many people are intimidated by writing poetry, but there are easy ways to engage with the process.   
 
Kobus Moolman is an experienced, multi-award-winning poet and a Professor of Creative Writing and English Literature at the University of the Western Cape. He has published seven collections of poetry, most recently The Mountain Behind the House (Dryad Press, 2020).
 
Below are three easy exercises he uses to keep his students writing.
 
#1. Begin with freewriting
 
Freewriting forms the basis of all creative writing workshops. It may very well become your “saving banister” when inspiration seems to have forsaken you. 
 
Read the following extremely useful summary compiled by Anne Schuster, a pioneer of creative workshops in South Africa:
 

• Free write for approximately 5 minutes.
• Keep your hand moving: Keep writing, don’t stop till the end of the set time.
• Think with your pen: Don’t try to think before you start. Find out what you want to write by writing.
• Don’t try to write “well”: Don’t worry about spelling or grammar or saying the wrong thing.
• Write the truth: You have something to say. Don’t worry about what people will think. Just write what is in your heart.
• Trust the process: Writing gets better with practice. Just keep writing.

 
Free Writing/Timed Writing – Anne Schuster. (From: South Africa Writing. Vol. 1 Jan 2006)
 
It is useful to set off with a phrase. Literally anything. Just open a book and take the first few words that your eye falls upon. Use this as the prompt, then carry on writing as fast as possible, without stopping to think or look up, for the required time.
 
#2. Read the poem below by Mzi Mahola
 
He Came Down the Street
 
He came down the street
In one hand
Holding a live chicken
By its wings
In the other
A packet of onions
And potatoes.
 
Notice how Mahola forces your attention onto (1) the ordinary elements in life and (2) the simple act of looking.
 
Now write your own visual poem, using the following as your title and your first line: 
“She came out of ….”
 
Keep your poem to seven lines. Don’t try and force the poem to mean anything. 
Simply allow the act of seeing to be the purpose of the poem.
 
#3. Read the poem below by Robert Berold
 
To my Room
 
When I moved here you were much darker,
so I put in windows and the aerial bookshelf 
that runs around above head height. Now 
I sleep with a weight of books above me. 
I want to cover them, like birds, to keep them quiet. 
 
I’ve slept three thousand nights in your arms. 
You have absorbed my snoring and my dreams. 
Your walls have seen dogs, spiders, frogs, snakes too, 
and once a porcupine ambled through.
 
The trees are coming into leaf today.
I tell you this slowly because you’ve never been outside.
 
Write your own poem using the same subject and the same title as Berold. Try to keep your poem between 10 and 15 lines.
 
Remember to work from the outside going in: not from the inside going out. You start with the outer world, the out-there, then you move slowly inward (inner world/emotion).
 
Emotion is important – without it we are simply photocopying the world – but it is always translated through detail and the senses.
 
In the weeks ahead, write responses to the two poems Moolman selected. See what happens when you enter a creative conversation.