A Collection of Essays

7 Days in the Orange Verse #44

In Roger Robinson’s online masterclass he encourages writers to create folders of their favourite poems and essays. Basically, creating your own anthologies of writing that speaks to you.

The idea is, by collecting all your favourites in one place you start to understand the lineage that you write in. Knowing this lineage, you can always go back to your favourites and feel at home.

I’ve been collecting up some of my favourite essays to put in my new folders and I thought I’d share them here with you. To be honest, I’ve probably shared them in this newsletter before - so think of it as a best of.

1 Audre Lorde, Poetry Is Not A Luxury (1985)

Even if you haven’t read the essay, you’ve probably heard the phrase, or maybe you follow the Instagram account of the same name. It’s a queer, feminist, black power call to speak from the heart, to find your voice and trust that you have something worth saying.

“it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are, until the poem, nameless and formless-about to be birthed, but already felt.”

2

Joy Sullivan

, My Best Writing Advice (2023)

I love this essay because Sullivan turns your typical, platitudinal (yes, it’s a word) writing advice on its head. Instead of ‘write what you know’ she says ‘write what you wish you didn’t know’; instead of ‘write from heart’ she says ‘write from the belly’; think you need to block out time and have a dedicated space to write? Sullivan says ‘You will never have more time to create than this present moment’. 

“A poet’s true job is not to offer advice, but, rather, to aptly name the ache.”

3 Jason Allen-Paisant, Kicking the Can Down the Road (2023)

In his T.S. Eliot Prize Writer’s Notes essay for the Poetry School, Allen-Paisant talks about his slow, lethargic process for completing books. Kicking the can down the road is a process of slowly chipping away at a project and allowing what wants to be said space to breathe.

“It took me a number of years to learn that good writing is the product of failure, of vulnerability, of taking time with yourself. You can’t write great stuff by writing to be perfect.” 

4 Keith Jarrett, Hymning From The Song Sheet: On The Power And Performance Of Writing Poetry (2021)

Jarrett is a former UK slam champion. In this essay he talks about the peculiarities of performance poetry, of playing with delivery and using your body. It comes from a collection of essays, Why I Write Poetry. Unfortunately, I don’t have a quote for you because I leant the book to a friend.

5 Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, Striving to See (2023)

From her book, Seeing For Ourselves, Manzoor-Khan explores what it’s like to live, perform and work as a muslim woman. As a woman, there are many ways in which I can relate to Manzoor-Khan’s experiences but I have never felt so confronted in my whiteness. Her writing is urgent in this bizarre world we find ourselves in. You can follow the thread from this collection of essays and poems back to Audre Lorde.

“We all wear masks of one kind or another, because the very fact of being witnessed impacts the ways we are ourselves.”

6 Poem

A Woman Speaks
~ Audre Lorde

7 Prompt

Read an essay, you can pick one of the one’s shared in this newsletter or select your own favourite.

Sit with it. Underline the phrases you love. Think about the questions it raises in you.

Use it as inspiration to write a poem.

Drop your essays and poems in the comments!

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If you want to come write with me and some other lovely folk, I’ll be running my last writing session of the year on 21st November. The theme is PARTY so expect music, finger food and an old family argument to resurface!

Have a great week creating!

Lots of love
Lorna 🍊