Thursday 19 March 2020

Madeleine Stratford : part three

How important is music to your poetry?

In my view, what defines a poem comes from a particularly rich and intense use of language’s threefold nature as a semantic, phonic and graphic medium. First, there is a conceptual aspect: words have meanings, and they always convey a message, tell a story, even when it may be difficult to grasp. Then, there is a sound aspect: poets use words, syllables, and letters, to make language sing. Anyone will tell you that poetry and music have a lot in common, and many will argue that poetry is often for the ear; it needs to be read aloud. Finally, there is a spatial aspect: as soon as the poem has been written, it becomes something concrete, a visible object. We often come to realize we are in front of a poem just by looking at it. In many ways, this spatiality of language is more important to me than “music,” though the two are definitely related. I guess for me, a poem’s unique “poetic nature” revolves around the treatment of three aspects: sense, sound and space. In my poetry, I strive to harness the particular relationship between those three components.

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