Poet Laureate presents writing techniques

By RORY MOORE

Tiger Media Network

Forsyth Library, the Department of English and Modern Languages, and Hays Public Library hosted a How-To-Series lecture featuring FHSU Poet Laureate and author Eileen Veatch inside the Memorial Union Trail Room on Tuesday to celebrate National Poetry Month. Veatch shared her foray into literature and taught the stylistic craft and techniques of writing poetry.

The laureate’s journey into poetry began when she was 16 years old and inspired by nature.

“I was laying in bed one night, couldn’t sleep, and looked at the moon out my window,” she said. “I was thinking about unconditional things we find that are unattractive, like pale skin, chubbiness, more roundness in our faces, or acne. You can equate those to the moon because it’s pale and has a lot of craters, and I was like, ‘That could be a good poem.’”

Veatch’s idea inspired her to write her first poem at three in the morning, which she details in her book ‘3 A.M. Notes.’

“I often write a lot of my poems at night,” she said. “It’s mostly when I feel my emotions.”

A misconception she noted was that all poems must rhyme, but she selectively employs it in her writing to convey emotions based on life experiences. 

“It’s hard to do in English,” Veatch said. “It’s easy to rhyme in Latin, but it’s not meant to happen in English.  In one poem, I rhymed intentionally because I wrote about a guy I was talking to, and he played me over and over again. I came back to the same rhyme every other line until the very end, where I put the same rhyme two times in one line.”

Her writing style relies on the beginning of her poems and her feelings. 

“The way I write my poems depends on my first line,” Veatch said. “I don’t usually rhyme it, but sometimes, it feels right in my heart, so I’ll go for it.”

A key craft to poetry is repetition, which Veatch utilizes heavily.

“It’s easier than rhyming, and it goes with alliteration as well,” she said. “Repetition is an easy thing you can put in your poems because it drives a meaning. Like ‘I gave him my food’ or ‘I gave him my water.’ That isn’t an exact repetition, but it gives the same vibe.”

She prefers using pronouns in her writing to communicate with her readers. 

“I give a little picture, and I go, ‘That’s me!’,” Veatch said. “I give another picture, and I go, ‘Now it’s you!’ Using ‘you’ as a pronoun when addressing a reader is common and fun to do.”

Part of the process of writing Poetry is editing, and Veatch noted that it can change the emotional impact of a poem and used Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘Timberlane’ as an example.

“He first wrote when he was 18,” she said. “His first version was four lines, but he edited it about 20 years later and it went to 243 lines. When you read the four-line version, it is emotional. You can tell he was a teenage boy who lost his girlfriend, and he was very upset about it. Then, when you read the 243-line one, you go, ‘Where’s all the emotion?’ It was like he was embarrassed of his emotions and cut it all out.”

Veatch discourages writers from editing out material in a poem but encourages them to do what they think is best.

“I’m not saying your editing should involve cutting all your emotions out,” she said. “But it can be handy when you write something emotional, you read it, and you think it was a lot. I do that all the time.”

Generally, her writing is dependent on setting, emotion and surroundings. 

“I write a lot of my poetry at night,” Veatch said. “Usually, it’s because it’s the end of the day. I’m not around anyone, scrolling through my phone reading, and then I contemplate all my emotions. I will cry at almost anything, so I need to write it out and not let it sit in my brain. I’ll write five or six poems about the same thing. It’s just whether my words hit harder in a certain way.”

Veatch’s work, including ‘3 A.M. Notes,’ is available on Amazon.