Swansea Sands

walking home
over the railway bridge

sand in my hair
sand in my socks

sand in my sandals
sand like sandpaper
sanding me down

tides rise and fall
sea gulls call
the bay so big
and me so small
as tiny as a tiny
grain of sand

Comment:

Not Swansea Sands at all, sorry. But a sandy beach all the same, here on the south coast of New Brunswick. The theme of the poem is sand – a grain of sand – and there’s lots of sand on that beach! Yolande and I worked on this poem together yesterday afternoon at a creative writing session we shared over the kitchen table in Island View, with not a grain of sea sand in sight.

We started with a central idea – Blake’s ‘to see the world in a grain of sand’ – and from there we generated a poem in three steps. (1) The first draft. (2) Second draft – eliminating words and ideas that did not fit the central image. (3) Third draft – polishing and finalizing the poem. Sometimes a fourth draft is needed, but in this case we settled with the third draft.

From this central idea, I generated two poems. Yolande generated a short story for her current sequence of childhood memories.

Yolande sent me her notes from the creative session. My comments in italics.

How to make my drafts more meaningful or productive… a bit like having a map or model:

1st Draft – Write as it comes to you – just write. Then read it aloud to partner, checking on sound and rhythm.

2nd Draft – Remove what does not fit or belong. Then read it aloud to partner, checking on sound and rhythm.

3rd Draft – Reorder, add, and polish, as necessary. Then read it aloud to partner, checking on sound and rhythm.

Make your poems alive, make them personal, make them an experience! 

And never forget the necessity of a live reading or series of readings in which you can feel and hear the words.