Jumoke Verrisimo, a performance poet, editor and researcher,with support from WriteHouse Collective and PEN Nigeria, shares her thoughts on poetry and metaphors during the second edition of the monthly poetry workshop held recently.
The workshop delved into the idea of experience as a vehicle for poetry and the use of metaphors.
Many young people want their voices heard. They also want to carve a niche for themselves with their narratives. For Verrisimo, she feels that it all boils down to understanding the craft and articulating experience. Her drive to improve the circumstances of writing led her to birth a poetry writing workshop.
She said during her teaching ‘Deep into yourself, narrate or express experience based on your own personal life’. Referring to the lines of one of the participants, she said ‘now he has dug into his own life, perhaps there are things he wished he could achieve, so those six words analyses his own life’.
Jumoke asserted that there is absolutely nothing like a ‘writer’s block’. She said that if one could generate a first line based on personal experience, a second line would ‘flow from the bones’ and a third line will be accomplished easily.
Verrisimo said poetry is not far-fetched, it is borne out of the things that are available to our consciousness and experience. She said ‘usually what comes to mind when you want to write poetry is to look for that which is not readily available’ instead of looking at things that are part of us.
Verrisimo delved into metaphors as a form of experience. “You need to make a metaphor of your life, you place two things that are different and try to make a connection between them. As a poet you have created that metaphor, and then we will begin to see our lives, through that metaphor” Verrisimo said.
She said, “poetry helps you as a writer of prose, metaphors helps your imagery and interpret an experience.
“You have to express the experience you gather in a way that the reader touches the experience”.
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