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To Dream, Perchance to Write...

Another direction I have been trying to stretch in is using more free- association -- I admire the vivid images and wild shifts in direction of many modern poets, while I tend (at least in poetry!) to follow a logical line, myself.

One way I have found to free up my writing is to write from dream images -- dreams being naturally vivid in images, wildly jumpy in logic.

I've introduced this in local workshop, and everyone else finds it productive too -- has usually been using it already. For me, it's best done by the "kamikaze", or speedwriting, method -- set a timer for three to five minutes and write non-stop, with no pause for analysis. Write images from dreams, as they come to you, and don't try to make them take a logical order.

This was what I came up with in a recent workshop:

River water cold to my knees.
The man with the secret fades into the woods.
These rocks are bones, this land my flesh.
Children climb that cliff forever
and sometimes fall.

The water is rising.
The ferryboat carries countries.
Jet planes fall from Saturn,
shadow the entire sky,
disappear into the river.

The light at the bottom of the pool
moves
when we dance.
The bridges go nowhere.

What do you come up with, writing from dreams?

Write On!
Anitra