Life Poetry ~ The Influence of Sharon Olds & Dorianne Laux

“Poems like mine – I don’t call them confessional, with that tone of admitting to wrong- doing. My poems have done more accusing than admitting. I call work like mine ‘apparently personal’ or in my case apparently very personal.” Sharon Olds

Writing poetry for me is an intensely personal process. I have a stash of my pre-pubescent out pouring in a purple box in the loft that has never been shared. Cringingly I can still recite my first love poem off by heart, it was a way of expressing feelings that overwhelmed me and were so immense they needed an outlet and poetry was the answer. Through the MA I have come to realise that poetry is still the answer, and it was whilst reading the work of poets like Sharon Olds and Dorianne Laux that I recognise that I am happiest and most fulfilled writing honest poetry, something that comes from life’s experiences and is important to me.

Writing poetry is like a search for identity, for meaning to you life. One concern about writing life poetry, has been a fear of letting go ‘if I write that, what would my mother say?’ or ‘what would Kim, Laura, Stuart, Tessa… say?’ During a session at university with guest speaker the poet Jo Shapcott I was relieved to hear her express similar anxieties regarding writing about people she knew. Another poet Vicki Feaver also discussed this complex issue; one of her ways round this was to use mythology as a vehicle to carry her more personal poetry, which was a real revelation to me, I had not thought along those lines before.

In ‘The Practice of Poetry’ on page 104 Sandra McPherson talks about writing poetry that scares you, saying: ‘…the poem needn’t be about atrocity, it need only scare its writer. Write it with your spine as audience’  The accompanying poem was written by Dorianne Laux titled ‘What My Father Told Me’ I was both horrified and fascinated by this poem, stunning in its simplicity, which made it all the more shocking and effective as it began:

‘Always I have done what was asked.

Melmac dishes stacked on rag towels.

The slack of a vacuum cleaner cord

Wound around my hand. Laundry

Hung on a line…’

Describing with plain ordinary everyday tasks and then the poem continues further on:

‘I do as I am told, hold his penis

like the garden hose, in this bedroom,

in that bathroom, over the toilet

or my bare stomach…’

A no nonsense, unsentimental honest narrative of the terror of sexual abuse at the hands of a father. This horrifying story, so beautifully executed in poetry lead me on a quest to find out more about the poet Dorianne Laux who calls herself ‘a poet of personal witness’ further reading of Laux’s work completely entranced me. Like Sharon Olds, Laux has the ability to take personal poetry and make it accessible and even if you can’t identify with the theme you can identify with the emotions. It is interesting to note that ‘What My Father Told Me’ was initially rejected, the magazine Laux had sent it to wanted to print the poem but suggested that she tone it down. Refusing to do so, she sent it to another magazine that accepted it and printed the entire poem in its original form.

Laux also said that:

‘We keep records, diaries, logs, news reports, pictographs, paintings, photographs. But it’s poetry that informs us of what we felt while those times and events rained down, and it’s poetry that recalls us to our selves. It’s our emotions that are in danger of being left out, and it is poetry that accounts for, is responsible to, the human element.’

This is pertinent to the poetry I am endeavouring to write, ultimately, I want to convey the emotion of the event, without hysteria but in the same unavoidable and honest tone as poets such as Olds and Laux. I hope to continue writing and improving my poems and being able to produce a collection as strong and demanding as possible, that brings together all the elements that have made an impact on my life and have shaped me.

 “Every poem I write falls short in some important way. But I go on trying to write the one that won’t. I want blood” Dorianne Laux