The Crack on the Wall

[Stephen Whiteside]

Thanks, all, for your positive comments. I really appreciate them.

I think this modest little poem came from two strands of thought.

The first relates to my ideas around 'inspiration'. That is to say, there was a time when I could only write when I felt 'inspired', and I realised this was a great weakness of mine. Over the years I've tried to turn things around, so that 'inspiration' becomes my servant and not my master. In other words, if I sit down to write a poem, because I have the time and inclination to do so, then inspiration has to learn it has to come to the party quick smart, or it will be severely punished.

One good way to find inspiration is to simply look to the left or right - or up or down - and begin to write about the first thing that grabs your attention. I don't suppose I would even have to use my eyes. I could close my eyes and write a poem about the first sound that I noticed. Or even the first smell. But I do tend to rely on my eyes most of the time.

The second notion is the one that Neville is talking about, the idea that the best poems (often, not always) come from the smallest things.

Ned Kelly is a good example. If you try to write a poem about Ned Kelly, telling the story of his life, you are really going to struggle, because there is just so much to say. I think that's why none of the films about Ned Kelly work. They try to pack too much in.

Yet if you just choose to focus on a single incident of his life - perhaps only a few hours, or even less - you can build a poem around that. With a bit of luck, you will end up creating a piece that actually says more than you originally planned, though there is no guarantee of that, of course, and you can't approach the task with that in mind as an objective.

You can write about a forest by concentrating on a single tree. But better still if you concentrate on a single leaf. I've long believed that all the secrets and lessons of the universe can be found in the single leaf of a tree, and I think that's a helpful notion to take into your writing. It has certainly worked well for me over the years.

[Neville Briggs]

Ah !! Stephen, you understand

[Stephen Whiteside]

Of course.