A writing style like no other
We all have our own unique style of writing for preferred genres. For some of us it’s crime thrillers or romance novels and for others it’s science fiction or stories for kids. For me it’s poetry.
Whatever the style, I have great regard for the creative expertise of any poet or author who puts their work out there for the rest of us to read. Centuries ago, poets such as Shelley (both Percy and Mary), Lord Byron, Coleridge and Wordsworth wrote convoluted wordage in long-winded stanzas. Compared with today their poetry was flowery and romantic – glamorised depictions of landscape and life in Regency England.
But fashions change and writing is no different. Today’s language and sentence length would probably make the Regency poets turn in their graves. But that doesn’t mean their poetry isn’t worth revisiting. If poetry and stories are well-written, they’re worth re-reading regardless of how flowery or out of date the language seems.
Poetry today is vastly different to past generations. The hard and fast rules of a sonnet or villanelle or even for that matter traditional rhyming poetry, don’t apply to free verse which can be in any shape, form or font. But given this freedom and easing of hard and fast rules, are today’s poets hitting the mark? Will today’s poetry stand the test of time?
The answer is yes, particularly when poets accurately and honestly write in their own unique style, depicting landscape and life as they see it. Poetry is all about communication, it’s all about setting a scene for the reader to say “yes, I can relate to this poem”… “that’s exactly how it is”… “this poet is holding a mirror to my experiences, my thoughts and dreams.”
A classic example of a unique writing style was poet and short story writer Henry Lawson (1867-1922). Born and raised in post-colonial Australia, Lawson was frequently criticised for not adhering to a ‘British’ writing model. He was the first Australian author to write honestly about the land and the people he lived alongside. He used Australian vernacular (language, slang, idioms) and he depicted the true landscape – drought, floods, hardship, a nation struggling with it’s own identity and he did this using short sentences, simple plots, realism and humour. A great observer of people, Lawson was a first person narrator and a master of understatement. He avoided exaggeration or overstatement and he wrote from experience – he related the present to the past. His readership responded because his experiences mirrored theirs. People resonated with Lawson’s depiction of landscape and life and his literary legacy continues to survive.
Regardless of how well we write, what we write, or how we express ourselves, if we write from the heart, from experience and/or knowledge, with accuracy and honesty, our voice is worth heeding, our writing worth reading. Developing our own unique style can take time and practice but when we write differently to everyone else and our words resonate with the reader, our literary voice has a good chance of surviving beyond our lifetime.
I recently found a copy of my first book of poetry in a second hand bookshop. My first thought was, ‘how sad, someone has given my book away’. Sadder still, was the fact that my poetry was only worth $2.00!! Undeterred, I signed the inside cover and left a message to say ‘Enjoy the read’ and put it back on the shelf. Maybe now I’m worth $2.50??