How To Write Poetry (1) / Heavy Metal addiction

How To Write Poetry 1, RTomens, 2025

Too much?

Are the drawn lines too thick? Do they overwhelm the typing?

I started a series called How To Write Poetry, based on the AI answer from a Google search. Perhaps I'll make enough of them to create a book. Imagining having done that, I then like to imagine some poor soul buying the book thinking they will learn how to write poetry. As long as they didn't buy it directly from me, otherwise they'd want their money back.

I'm not saying it's impossible for a How To text on writing poetry to succeed in helping to create the next ------  ------ (insert a great poet) but what does that even matter so long as whoever starts writing enjoys it? Don't be a snob! As long as I don't have to read the results...

How To Write Visual Poetry? Perhaps I should have asked that - damn! You can. See what 'it' says. 'It' knowing everything. AI can write Visual Poetry, I'm sure. Hold on, isn't half the fancy digital Text Art I see on X written by some kind of programming anyway? You know, the whizzy, pulsating, shimmering stuff you see. I blame Kenneth Goldsmith. 

So I printed part of the answer on paper that had already been treated then proceeded to type, first the vertical bank of lines running through it, then the double-typed angular lines and some wavy lines at the bottom. It wasn't enough. 

That noise you heard was me thinking (sounds like the rusty cogs of a knackered machine slowly turning). 

Pens! Yes, grab a pen and draw - that's what it needs. I picked out the Pentel N850 permanent marker and started. Minutes later I thought 'Fuck, that's too thick!'. But having started, what could I do? Abandon it? I very rarely abandon work. Carry on. Use some red. It was starting to look a right mess. 

Help! 

There's no-one to help you but yourself!

Spaces filled in on the right-hand side...yes...leaving holes through which some type is visible; I'm sure you noticed. 

How's it looking? Unusually, I couldn't tell. Is it total crap? OK? Good? 

Finally, black down the left-hand side to frame the typed section.

Put it to one side.

Get on with important stuff, such as listening to Venom...

As well as being addicted to typing Visual Poetry, I'm now addicted to Metal. It's never been fashionable. Never 'cool'. Now I like the fact that's it's neither. It was always there, since the 80s, being ignored by me. Gradually though, over the last year or so, I've been seduced by it (Metallica first, then Pantera and others). A few weeks back I bought A History of Heavy Metal by Andrew O'Neill in a charity shop. That did it. It's a humorous take but for a novice like me, informative too regarding bands I'd never heard of before. After all these years of listening to music, it's great to start enjoying a new (old) genre.

TTFN