SANTOSH BAKAYA
Today in my gym class, I noticed a newcomer.
She looked at me and smiled.
I also did the same; my eyes were fixed on her T-shirt, which said, ‘If you find yourself in a mess, blame the man for it’.
This brought a wry smile to my lips. When I found her looking at me, I mimed a query. She merely smiled.
“So, does it mean that you grip any random man by his collar, walking on the road, and blame him for the mess you find yourself in?” I asked her.
At this, she laughed wholeheartedly.
“I can put the blame only on the man in my house.”
“How does he react?”
“He is noncommittal.” She said, trying to hide a smile.
That set my mind working, and I wrote an article on it.
The point that I am trying to make here is that OBSERVATION is very important for a budding writer. When I am in a crowded place, my eyes are always darting around, observing the minutest details, stashing the dialogues exchanged, the expressions and gestures, and the physical appearance of people. Anything can creep into one’s writings. Anytime.
After leaving the cardio room, I went out onto the terrace, where high- intensity exercises were in full swing on the turf. But my eye caught some movement on the telephone wire. Two pigeons, which I often see perched on the telephone wire with very phlegmatic looks, seemed quite happy. The reason being the fresh breeze and the imminent rain! No, it was no longer imminent. It had already started drizzling. Raindrops pitter-pattered on their feathery backs, and my heart erupted into poetry, all because of keenly observing things around me.
If you want to write good poetry, you need to explore. Visceral poetry brimming with stunning concrete imagery transports us to new landscapes. Streets, abandoned buildings, rag pickers, pavement dwellers, mongrels, beggars, vendors, fisherwomen, cobblers, and the stubborn cows on the roads. Everything can give us an idea to write.
We should always be open to visualizing and experiencing the world from fresh perspectives. It was Gertrude Stein who said,” to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write”.
If we keep spilling ink on paper, our brains will get more opportunities to create
“What makes you a poet is a gift for language, an ability to see in the heart of things, and the ability to deal with important unconscious material. When all these things come together, you are a poet. But there isn’t one little gimmick that makes you a poet. There isn’t any formula for it. “
Erica Jong
The author is an academician, poet, essayist, novelist, and TEDx speaker, with more than twenty published books to her credit..
