Keats encounters
Commemorating the 200th anniversary of the death of the Romantic poet, Alison Chisholm launches WM’s competition for Keats-themed poetry
The great romantic poet John Keats died on 23 February, 1821, at the age of 25, his body racked by then-incurable tuberculosis. Despite his young age, he had already studied for a career as an apothecary and surgeon, and then given up medicine in order to write poetry. The result is a body of work consisting of around 150 poems that have touched the hearts of readers for 200 years, and a place among the greatest of English poets.
To honour his memory, Writing Magazine poets are invited to enter a competition for poems rooted in any aspect of his life or work. There is plenty of scope. From his childhood in London, being orphaned and brought up by his grandmother and two guardians, his education and medical training, relationships with the two women whose friendship meant so much to him, to the ups and downs of his medical and writing careers, and then his final months of pain in Rome, where it was hoped that the warmer climate would help him, his life story is as fascinating as it is tragic.
Every one of the poems he left has the potential to be a source of inspiration for today’s poets. An idea, a few lines or simply a phrase still has the power to ignite the imagination of fellow writers. However well you know
Keats, a few hours re-reading the great odes, or Endymion, The Eve of St Agnes or his sonnets will allow you to luxuriate in his ideas, his leaps of imagination, and the intensity of his imagery and wording. They may also inspire your entry for the competition.
Keats’ legacy could be another source of inspiration. He has been copied and quoted, taught in schools and colleges, set as a text for spoken English examinations, and turned into poster art. How did you first meet him? What effect did the encounter have on you?
With so many possibilities for writing a winning poem, it may be useful to collect together a number of potential themes, and experiment a little with each. This is a timeconsuming exercise, but it’s a good way of selecting the perfect poem to enter, and there’s the added bonus that you may write a whole handful of poems inspired by Keats. If time permits, put a selection of initial drafts away for a while. When you get them out in a few days, if you’re lucky the process of selection will be taken out of your hands, and one draft will be insisting that you focus on it and forget the others, for the time being at least.
Your competition poem may be written in free verse or any set form, so you might choose to pick one of Keats’ own preferred forms. If you do this, remember that the heroic couplets, sonnets, odes and Spenserian stanzas are still wonderful vehicles for poetry today, but the way we use language has changed over the years. The vocabulary and inversions of the early 19th century do not sit well in the 21st.
While you are writing, remember the value of imagery in communicating your message to the reader. Anything that appeals to readers’ senses will give your words immediacy, and help them to identify with the poem. While visual imagery is important, don’t underestimate the effect of chiming with the other senses. The sense of hearing, smell, taste and touch will help to imprint the poem’s message more intensely.
Whether you are a writer who prefers to pour a stream of consciousness onto the page and then start to tease it into a poem, or who would rather take a little longer and develop the pattern of the poem from the start, remember that the real work begins after the first draft has been completed. By assessing the poem’s quality and its message, redrafting and revising, and paying meticulous attention to every detail of the writing, you will have a much better chance of producing a serious contender for the prize.
Be prepared to keep returning to your emerging poem, reading it silently and aloud, trying it out on another writer, perhaps, to see how effective it is, and keeping your mind open to any little adjustments that will improve a phrase. Just don’t put yourself in the position of one poet who admitted of a competition entry: ‘I kept it back to work on it for so long I missed the deadline.’
At the final stage before you submit, take a few minutes to read once again some of Keats’ poems. Ask yourself if yours is of such quality that it will stand as a fitting tribute to the tragic hero. Then resist the temptation for palely loitering, and enter with confidence. Good luck.