Molly Payne

MP

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  • Molly Payne made a comment
    Thank you and good luck

    Thank you so much for creating and leading this course! It's been incredibly helpful and has opened my eyes to new ways to approach poetry that I will definitely use in the future.

  • Molly Payne made a comment
    Sharing poetry

    I was quite daunted that other people would be able to read my poem as I have never really written poetry before because I've always convinced myself that i'm not very good at it. However, I actually really enjoyed reading the feedback that people had left about my poem as it was encouraging to read that someone enjoyed my work and got out of it what I wanted...

  • Molly Payne replied to Molly Payne
    Your words, your choice

    Thank you!

  • Molly Payne made a comment
    Your words, your choice

    Some gardens are neat and tidy,
    With cut grass and trimmed hedges.
    Others are overflowing,
    with shrubbery and wildflowers and weeds.
    The fences are falling down.
    Nature is taking over.

  • Molly Payne made a comment
    Starting your poem

    When I looked out of my window, I couldn't see any people but I could hear the birds tweeting out of view. I noticed how some people's gardens are tidy and trimmed but others have been allowed to overgrown and are teeming with natural beauty.

  • Molly Payne made a comment
    Workshop: The surrealist game

    I really enjoyed that game as it helped to create some interesting lines that could spark new ideas. Here are two of my favourite ones that I can up with:
    Excitement is an extinct animal that lived millions of years ago.
    Sorrow is a large plant that grows in the ground and reaches up towards the sky.

  • Molly Payne made a comment
    Welcome to Week 2

    I'm more creative when I have a stimulus to work from. I find it very difficult to just come up with something on the spot - there has to be something to start my creative process. I'm normally more creative in a theatrical or musical way but I'd like to improve my creative writing, particularly poetry.

  • Molly Payne replied to Molly Payne
    How do you do it?

    @AlannahMoody Hi Alannah! I wondered if maybe it was an association with this sort of decor in holiday homes/villas by the sea? I imagine the speaker to be inside when reading this poem, perhaps because of the sense of isolation and loneliness in it, so maybe that's why we imagine the room as cool and white-washed rather than reflecting the warmth and comfort...

  • Molly Payne made a comment
    Looking back, looking forward

    For me, the most interesting part of the week was exploring puzzles and how, even if you don't understand something completely, this can affect your reading of the poem and evoke responses from you as a reader. I also enjoyed thinking about the poem as a 'room' or 'object' as I had never come across this approach to close reading before but found it good way...

  • Molly Payne made a comment
    Practise, practise, practise

    When I first read 'Apollo', I got the sense that the speaker couldn't believe that they were getting the chance to watch the moon landing with their family as it was such a monumental event in history. However, on coming back to it now, I get the feeling that the speaker doesn't really care about what they are watching and the moon landing doesn't mean that...

  • Molly Payne replied to Harshada Kulkarni
    Poetry can be puzzling

    I also feel the lack of named or gendered characters makes the poem seem like a universal experience. It makes the poem sound like a transcript of a conversation that should have been spoken aloud, making it ideal for performance by anyone.

  • Molly Payne made a comment
    Spotting patterns

    Throughout the poem, the pronouns "I" and "you" are used frequently while "us" is only used once. This suggests that, although the speaker and the subject of the poem are together, there is a distance and isolation between them that causes a lack of communication. The use of the pronoun "us" also is only used when the speaker "thought of" them together,...

  • Molly Payne made a comment
    How do you do it?

    I imagine a square room with white-washed walls and clean, cool furniture. The sun shines in through a huge, full-length window. You can hear the crashing of the sea and the faint whistle of the wind. There is a cool, relaxing atmosphere that is also vaguely impersonal.

  • Molly Payne made a comment
    First impressions

    I read 'Apollo' and felt that it was a long, thin room that seemed to keep extending no matter how far you walked down it. In it, you can hear the crackle of TV static and the buzz of electric lights (perhaps because of the sibilance used throughout the poem). There seems to be a warm, welcoming atmosphere of unity as people of different races come together to...

  • Molly Payne made a comment
    What is close reading?

    My main experience of encountering poetry is through education but, since then, I've found a real love for it outside of the classroom too. Carol Anne Duffy's 'The World's Wife' is one of my favourite collections but I think the poetry that has had the biggest impact on me is written by people close to me, like my friends or family, as I feel that I can really...