The Lab
Tips from South West Writers

Radio Devon featured local writers every Wednesday in a slot we affectionately called Wednesday Writes. The idea was to showcase local poets and help inspire others to pick up a pen or smartphone and have a go at writing themselves. Abby Davies and I dreamed up 'The Lab' as a resource to help with this. Below you will find the poets who read on air, sharing their inspirations and top tips for experimenting. Please do share what you cook up by emailing me through the contact page. A selection of poems will feature on this website. - Thom

Thom Boulton

About
Thom is the Poet Laureate for the City of Plymouth (2016 - ).

Influences, Processes, and Rituals
"I quite often take inspiration from mythology and folklore and try to weave this into my writing to help construct imagery. I like to write snippets of lines as they come to me (often on notes on my phone) and then piece them together. Editing and rewording is essential but it always gives a good starting point."

Current Experimenting Tips
"Micropop has been a huge influence recently and I've been trying to experiment with using this in my writing. It's hard to keep poetry fun and innocent whilst conveying a deeper meaning. I try and add my own voice in a playful way, like saying 'don't you agree?' or being obvious, 'When they painted his dead body/he had to hold so perfectly still/it looked like he was dead. And he was.'

I listen to Jack Strauber and read Ron Padgett books which help to develop this surreal/fun voice."

Robert Garnham

About
​Robert is 'The Professor of Whimsy' and an Edinburgh Fringe Performer.

Influences, Processes, and Rituals
"As a poet I'm aware that there's always this implied allegiance to the truth. What I mean by this is, poets aren't supposed to lie. That's the whole image we have built for ourselves. We are upholders of honesty and integrity. Well, guess what! Poets can lie just as much as other artists, perhaps even more so. In fact, just before writing my last poem I got my poetic licence renewed. It's similar to a drivers licence except they don't take it away from you if you're drunk. In fact, it helps. (Joking, of course)." 

​Current Experimenting Tips
"In my poem 'High Tea', I wanted there to be some kind of 'turn' where things change. Otherwise, the poem doesn't really have any meaning. So off he disappears in the hot air balloon and the mood of the poem changes , purposefully, for comic effect. I love poems that tell a story, even if the story is only half based on reality, they take the reader somewhere, not only in the narrative, but also emotionally. Naturally, they're not all so effective and I've spent many a day staring at a blank piece of paper hoping to write something just as effective."

Kat Savage

About
Kat aka FierceSister is the lead singer of I Love Amp.

Influences, Processes, and Rituals
"I don't think I have a style; I write like a child would write, I just let it come out however it wants! I also love heightened emotion and will write straight after an argument/funeral or a radio programme featuring something dramatic etc. Ritual wise, I'm a night owl. Poetry comes to me mostly in the small hours of the morning. I'll jot down lines I hear in a movie or a conversation or just in my mind throughout the day, but the poem forms at night."

Current Experimenting Tips
"I've been trying to put some of my dreams and meditations into poetry recently. They are a bit weird and may not translate to others, but it's a great way to convert a dream/meditation diary into a compilation. I like to write about magical things for my own enjoyment and will sketch in my journal faces in trees or rocks etc and try and write a fantastical poem from that moment with mythical creatures."

Julian Isaacs

About
Julian aka Auntie Pus (the punk balladier) has an MA in Creative Writing.

Current Experimenting Tips
"In creative writing they teach you, when writing a novel, to do your research but then discard it, as it's there to give you a feel and ambiance of your background or period and not so you can over-contextualise. The same is true with poetry, which is akin to free jazz, in that the most accomplished exponents of free, experimental, non-rhyming or any verse that baulks pre-war constraints and traditions, are those that can also express themselves competently within any such constraints. The best free jazz musicians are those who are very accomplished musicians in a more formal arena. For example Derek Bailey, the most famous British free jazz guitarist, cut his teeth playing in the BBC Dance Orchestra. Applying this to poetry, nothing but good can come of studying, for example, Elizabethan and Plutarchan sonnets, the difference in rhyme scheme etc., forcing yourself to write a couple of each in the correct structure, and then tearing them up if you don't like them. The knowledge and experience gained are invaluable. I saw a facsimile of a page from Keats' notebook once and it had dashes for the syllables with the words he had so far filled in. I might not know what I'm talking about, but Keats definitely did. Last but not least, OuLiPo poetry, which is in one sense, one of the most experimental movements, is all about writing within constraints, not only within poetry, as evidenced for example by Georges Perec’s novel ‘A Void’, written entirely without employing the letter ‘e’"

Poppy Jones

About
Poppy debuted at Saltram: Live and featured in the Providence Poets line-up.

Influences, Processes, and Rituals
​"I adore authors such as Roger Deakin, Mary Oliver and, of course, Sylvia Plath. I focus on evoking imagery, positive or negative. The obsession for me is projecting onto someone else the emotions I feel at the time of writing without apology." 

Current Experimenting Tips
"I am currently working on including internal rhyme. It's important to me that this does not detract or feel forced from the intimate or authentic connection I work to achieve when writing. I think anything worth writing should always retain a form of feeling, dragging the reader back to a pure, human experience. I am also aiming to be more confident in my reading and a tip for this is to keep throwing yourself heavily into the open events, ensuring you don't back out or let other's style concern you. Everyone brings with them their own life history and manner of writing/reading.

Richard Thomas

Richard has edited/co-edited poetry for INK, Tribe, and Thief. 

Influences, Processes, and Rituals
"Something I particularly enjoy doing, is taking from the everyday world around me and finding the surrealism or absurdity in it. I also like blurring the line between fictitious and autobiographical. I am a big fan of the 'freewrite' too, and champion setting a timer and just writing whatever comes to mind in a notebook until the timer goes off, not judging it as it comes, but just letting it pour out. A lot of it won't make any sense, but there will also be those gemstone-phrases or images which go on to form the basis for a poem.

Current Experimenting Tips
Lately, I have been returning to my haiku, and particularly, writing about wildlife. In haiku, wildlife can be a well-trod path, so I have been trying to blend in a humanistic quality, but without putting my own emotions into them too much. I write my haiku in a form which is proposed to be closer to the original form, and that is to not adhere to the seventeen syllables of the 5-7-5 format, but to make them tighter, with fewer syllables, often eleven to thirteen, and focussing more on the content, the season word (kigo), and creating a juxtaposition (kireji).

Matt Thomas

Matt is co-pilot of RAAY, draws and writes with his left hand.

Influences, Processes, and Rituals
"Over the years, I’ve been strongly influenced by music. A song can be about nothing or everything, or sometimes both at once, and it does it all in about three minutes. I suppose I’m concerned with what seems like the peculiar nature of existence, and how little things, like dust swirling in a sunbeam, or a broken windowpane leaning against a wall in a back lane, or the sound of a magpie, can help to describe that peculiarity. I have a special, poems-only pen, and special poems-only paper. I start longhand, then type, then go back and forth a lot, writing the same thing over and over again until it starts to make sense."

Current Experimenting Tips
"I like collage as an artistic practice, and recently I’ve been building collaged poems out of found words, perhaps a sort of Dada-like activity. I’ll read through a text – old camera instruction manual, comic book catalogue, sci-fi novel - and extract interesting words (sometimes actually cutting them out, sometimes just copying), which then get arranged into some sort of vaguely poetic beginning, middle and end. I’ve started doing it with my own writing as well – old poems, dissertations, journals. It’s a way to loosen up and invite absurdity and playfulness into my writing, but can also lead to moments of real beauty."

Jackie Juno

Richard Hillesley

Marion Maz

Jason Butler

Ran RhymeWarp at the BBAR (Plymouth) and performed at Glastonbury Litfest.

Influences, Processes, and Rituals
​"I have always written poetry since I was a kid, but as I grew up a fan of hip hop I also wrote lyrics, and since my early twenties I’ve been performing as frontman for various South West acts (currently Freshly Squeezed and Antimatador). This early influence defined a lot of my writing style, taking great pleasure in crafting wordplay and complex rhymes. It also meant that when I write poetry it empowered me to break free of the couplet style rhymes of hiphop and explore new ways of expressing myself with conversational or prose poems."

Current Experimenting Tips
"Since April 1st I have written and performed “A Poem A Day During Lockdown” based on current affairs or topics suggested by followers of my facebook page - I’d reached day 70 when I was called back off of furlough. I was very lucky to go on a writing retreat with some of the best spoken word performers I know and they helped to unlock ways to overcome writers block and find new ways of generating ideas."

Andrew Martin