Poetry as a Playful and Pleasurable Creative Practice, with Mark McGuinness

With inspiration from Mark McGuinness, you’ll integrate poetry into your writing life as a pleasurable practice that elevates your prose. In this interview, Mark describes the vision for his podcast and his own poetic beginnings, and he urges writers (and readers) to simply enjoy poetry. You’ll also discover the impact poetry can have on us as readers and writers. You’ll see ways it intersects with and impacts prose—you can even play a literary game he describes at the end. Learn from Mark: How a mouthful of air is a perfect image for poetry and podcasts How can we translate metaphor into our other forms of writing (without being weird) The metaphor that comes to his mind when describing himself and his writing How poems “mug” Mark and he drops everything to chase them like leprechauns The importance of getting input on your work and finding a writing mentor How to take pleasure in poetry Plus, play his writing game (bring your prose)! Listen to episode 245 and check out excerpts in the transcript below. You’ll be inspired by his warm, encouraging advice. If his subtle persuasion succeeds, you may embrace poetry as the next step in your literary journey. Meet Mark McGuinness Mark McGuinness is a poet based in Bristol, UK. On his poetry podcast A Mouthful of Air he interviews contemporary poets about their writing practice and draws out insights that can help any writer become more creative, expressive and memorable. Mark also takes classic poems apart to show us how they work and what we as writers can learn from the examples of poets including Yeats, Shakespeare, Thomas Hardy, Chaucer and Edward Lear. Links: Visit amouthfulofair.fm Listen to A Mouthful of Air on Apple Podcasts Twitter: @amouthfulofair Instagram: @airpoets https://youtu.be/bu0LwCeNlQw Mark McGuinness Interview This is a lightly edited transcript. [00] – Ann Kroeker With inspiration from my guest Mark McGuinness, you may find yourself integrating poetry into your writing life as both a pleasure and a practice. I’m Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach. If you’re tuning in for the first time, welcome. If you’re a regular, welcome back. I’m sharing my best tips and training skills and strategies to help writers improve their craft, pursue publishing and achieve their writing goals. Today I have Mark McGuinness on the show, a poet from Bristol, UK. On his poetry podcast, A Mouthful of Air, Mark interviews contemporary poets to discover their writing practice and draws out insights that can help any writer become more creative, expressive and memorable. Mark also takes classic poems apart to show us how they work and what we as writers can learn from the examples of poets like Yates, Shakespeare, Thomas Hardy, Chaucer and Edward Lear. Listen in on our conversation. [00:54] – Ann Kroeker I am so excited to have Mark McGuinness on the call today on our show and we are going to talk about a lot of different things related to the creative life, the writing life, even the poetry life. Mark, thanks for being on the call. [01:09] – Mark McGuinness Thank you. It’s lovely to be here, Ann. [01:12] – Ann Kroeker I am looking forward to learning more about how you approach your own creative life and how you use and enable poetry to be part of what feeds your creative life, how you inspire others with poetry, because that seems to be a big part of your life. Can you tell the listeners and viewers, can you tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do? [01:37] – Mark McGuinness Sure. I am a poet living in Bristol, in the southwest of England, in the UK. I’ve been writing poetry quite a while and in my typical group of friends, I’m usually the one who reads poetry. I’ve always been quite aware that most people don’t read poetry most of the time. There are a lot of people who are very literate, very well read, very avid readers, but who will generally read anything but poetry. And to my point of view, it’s not that hard. I think a lot of people get put off at school, they have a bad experience or they think it’s this thing up on a pedestal that they don’t understand or that isn’t going to speak to them in their lives. And I got this urge about two years ago when I first got the idea for the show that I would really like to take some of these books behind me down from the shelf and just read a poem and just share it with people and say, “Isn’t that great? And notice what’s happening in the third line here. Isn’t it marvelous what she’s done with the rhyme or whatever?” And just to share the magic that I feel that I don’t think it’s that hard for other people to tune into. [03:00] – Mark McGuinness And then following on from that, I thought, “Well, actually, I know quite a few poets I’ve been to their readings. I’ve read their books. I’ve sat next to them in workshops. Why don’t I invite them on the show, too? And then they can read it.” And so the way the show works is that every episode is focused on one poem, and the first thing you hear is the poem. Because if it’s a good poem, you don’t need an introduction. You don’t need to be told why you should like it or all the footnotes and stuff. You either like it or you don’t, or you feel something or you don’t. But you’ve really got to listen and put your kind of assumptions aside about it. So we hear the poem read by either me, if it’s a dead poet, if they’re alive, I get them on the show and they read it themselves. And then we have a little bit of context, a little bit of, well, what’s going on in the poem? And again, if they’re alive and they’re on the show, I’ll ask them, where did the poem come from? How did you get the idea? [03:59] – Mark McGuinness How did you work it up? What process did you go through from the initial idea to what we have on the page or on the screen or in the ear. And quite often that journey is really surprising. I mean, as a writer, I’m fascinated by how things evolve. And if the poet is sadly no longer with us, then I will share my thoughts on why I think the poem is worthy of our attention and what I think is going on. And then the end of the show, we hear the poem again. And even though it’s the same poem and the same recording, it should sound different. In fact, listeners tell me it sounds different because it’s a bit like a magic eye, because they can see things or they can hear things in it that they weren’t aware of the first time rounds. So that’s it. It’s all quite self contained. [04:51] – Ann Kroeker That is a wonderful concept. I took an online course in years past where we did these close readings, and it just opened my mind up. It took me back in time. I actually studied poetry and creative writing as an undergraduate at Big Ten University here in the States. And so I have a little exposure to poetry, and it was my entree into writing and building a writing life. So tell us what the name of the show is and why you chose it. [05:23] – Mark McGuinness Okay. It is called A Mouthful of Air. And I know it’s a good title because I nicked it from W. B. Yeats in a little poem that he wrote, an early love poem. Would you like to hear it? It’s really short. It’s easier than me describing, of course. Okay, so it’s called He Thinks of Those Who Have Spoken Evil of His Beloved. And it’s not hard for us to guess that his beloved was like to be moored gone. Famously he was in love with her. She was a significant figure in the Irish political independence movement in the late 19th century. So it begins. It’s just six lines, so blinking, you miss it, but it goes: Half close your eyelids, loosen your hair,And dream about the great and their pride;They have spoken against you everywhere,But weigh this song with the great and their pride;I made it out of a mouthful of air,Their children’s children shall say they have lied. And I love the fact that Yeats, he emphasizes a poem, in which case a song. He was a very lyric poet. He emphasizes how light, how insubstantial it is. It’s almost nothing. [06:56] – Mark McGuinness “Weigh this song.” She’s being criticized by people. He doesn’t like “the great and their pride.” And he’s saying, but you can’t—don’t respond to the criticism. Just “weigh this song” with it almost as though he’s saying that poetry can balance the scales of this injustice. And he says, “I made it out of a mouthful of air.” So that’s what the poem is made of. It’s made of speech, it’s made of breath. And of course, this takes us back to the origins of poetry, which is even older than writing. So it would have been spoken or maybe sung way back before people thought of writing poems down. And I think this is something for me, something quite magical about poetry, that insubstantial thing. You’re making it out of nothing, really. A mouthful of air that still survives into the 21st century. And I thought, Isn’t that a lovely way of thinking about a poem? And it’s perfect for a podcast, because what you get on the podcast, of course, is the spoken poem. Again, we’ve gone from the text back to speech. So that’s where I got it. [08:02] – Ann Kroeker It’s both literal and metaphor. And metaphor is a big part of poetry, and we can grab it. Most of the people, I think, listening to my show are writing prose or novels or short stories or essays or articles, and probab...