I remembered how I made so much buzz online and offline when I encountered poet Tade Ipadeola’s teaching about poetry some 6 months ago or thereabouts. His comparative analysis of poetry the growth from foetus to adult hood, remains indelible in my creative heart and had since improved my writing dexterity a great lot.
I received another boost to my penning act at a Creative Writing Workshop organized by Association of Nigerian Author, OAU Chapter, on the 22nd of August, 2015. There, I sat excitedly spell-bound under the tutelage of Prof. Segun Adekoya as he gave ‘quality advices’ not just ‘lecture’ on writing of poetry.
He taught many thing like parallelism, contrasting, structuring, imagery and the creating of beauty with words.
“One who challenges (criticizes) you work is tasking you to work harder” he asserted. “Every good poem MUST be paradoxical”.
The language of poetry is the language of indirection. Simplifying poetry is denaturing poetry:
When poetry devices are absent, it is not poetry.
- The language of true poetry is translucent NOT transparent.
- The language of poetry is a language of suggestion (not explanation).
- The cloudy nature of the language of poetry is not a minus to good poetry, it is the beauty instead. It is the register and jargon of poets.
- When what you write is too plain, simple and straightforward, you have just written a prose.
***Notes by Abegunde Sunday Olaoluwa, a Public Speaker and Author of: Unleash Your Potential Beyond Just Motivation. He is also the CEO of Speaking Pen Int’l Concept (SPIC).
by Abegunde Sunday Olaoluwa
