My name is Katherine Hetzel. I’ve been a member of the Leicester Writers Club for about a year. One of the major benefits of attending meetings – admittedly by Zoom in my case – is the sheer breadth of writing presented by other members at reading evenings. So many genres and writing styles! But the thing that has really surprised me is the amount of poetry being presented.
Now I like writing poems, but mainly the stuff that rhymes. I produced silly poems ‘off the cuff’ for my children when they were young. Won £50 in a writing magazine’s limerick competition (my first ever paid writing!). Wrote a children’s story called ‘The Poetic Postman’. I had a go at writing what I thought might be ‘real’ poetry…but it could’ve just been posh prose laid out a bit funny.
I always felt completely at a loss when presented with ‘proper’ poetry. I had never really wanted to read it, didn’t enjoy it when I couldn’t find a rhythm to follow, and didn’t understand the point at which prose morphed into poetry. So it’s fair to say I stuck my head in the sand, pretty much ignored any poetry with a capital ‘P’, and focused on writing stories instead.
But hearing poems – written by real poets whose work has been published – at LWC meetings made me realise what a narrow view of and how little understanding I have of poetry.
So much so, that I decided to buy a couple of ‘what is/how to write poetry’ books to begin to educate myself on the matter. I’ve read plenty of ‘how to write a novel’ books over the years and found lots to help me, why not do the same with poetry? I have to admit, it’s taking time to digest what I’m learning but I’m making notes along the way and it’s already paying off. A recent birthday gift was a small tome of poems for gardeners and I was really chuffed with myself when I recognised the rhyme scheme in several of the poems! And I can now tell a couplet from an enclosed couplet.
It does feel like taking baby steps, but they are steps which would not have been taken if I hadn’t joined LWC, and it proves you are never too old to learn something new when it comes to writing. I shall be listening to the poetry presented in future with a very different ear, and who knows? Maybe I’ll even try writing it. Without a rhyme.
Contributed by: Katherine Hetzel
leicesterwritersclub.com 