Clifford Liles has won, been placed or shortlisted in many poetry competitions. His work has been published in several literary journals and magazines. He is currently preparing a debut pamphlet featuring a thematic selection from his poems, many of them sonnets.
When is a poem finished?
When is a poem finished? The decision on whether your poem is complete depends on who is involved. By “complete”, I do not mean perfect, but stable such that no further changes may be foreseen by those persons it is reviewed by. These persons may be the author, trusted readers, workshop participants, editors, or the … Continue reading When is a poem finished?
Sculpting Breath – Punctuation in Poetry
Have you heard of the Antikythera mechanism? It is an archaeological find of a clockwork device originating from Antiquity [1]. Pictures of it show a compact mechanism of cogs and gears. Sometimes, I think, a sonnet may be such a concise mechanism too, with every word playing a part. When writing a sonnet, which may … Continue reading Sculpting Breath – Punctuation in Poetry
Agile Writing – The Heuristic Approach to Writing
In my previous blog about the writing process, we looked at ‘word droughts’ of the blank page, or scrabbling for worthwhile words, phrases and ideas in the desert of Writers Block. If that helped, what next? Are you waiting for some exact recipe for the next stage? A procedure? A step-by-step assembly manual? When I … Continue reading Agile Writing – The Heuristic Approach to Writing
Word Drought
Imagine you have just completed a written work, a marvellous profusion of prose or poetry. It has been well received and now, the next day, you are wanting to start something new. You sit in front of your notebook or laptop facing a blank page. A blank page empty as a salt flat. A boundless … Continue reading Word Drought
Rhyming Sonnets
A sonnet is an echo chamber of sounds, a closed form, allowing sound patterns to form consciously, or otherwise, in the reader’s mind. Rhyming is part of that sound-patterning, and rhymes can appear either at the end, the beginning or inside each line. Rhymes at the end of each line have characterised sonnets for centuries; … Continue reading Rhyming Sonnets
Clifford Liles 