The snow we saw together -
has it fallen again
this year?

Via Basho

Following on from my first New Year’s Resolution, here’s my second one. Once I’ve posted my resolutions, I’ll be writing about Why Most New Year’s Resolutions Fail - and what to do about it.

2. Write More Poetry

In terms of creativity, writing poetry is my ‘first love’. Over the past couple of years however, it’s had to take a back seat for several reasons: firstly, most of my writing time has been taken up with the MA in Creative and Media Enterprises at Warwick University, for which I’ve been studying part-time. Secondly, I had a fantastic opportunity to join the editorial committee of Magma, one of the foremost poetry magazines in the UK. I was an offer I couldn’t turn down, and I’m having tremendous fun and learning a huge amount by working with my colleagues on the magazine. The most intensive time was last year when I read thousands of poems as editor of Magma 34, which I’m very proud of. Finally, there’s been the small matter of attending to my clients’ creativity and keeping Wishful Thinking going.

So I took a conscious decision to put my own writing on the back burner temporarily - but I made a promise to myself that once the MA was over, I’d carve out some time for writing poetry again, hence this New Year’s Resolution.

The big danger of course, is that the poetry gets squeezed out by the pressures of business - what the Irish poet Louis MacNeice called “The perennial if unimportant problem / Of getting enough to eat”. So I’m making efforts to ensure that I keep my promise to myself. One of them is by posting the resolution up here - it’s amazing what a good reminder a public commitment can be!

And tomorrow I’m starting the Advanced Poetry Workshop run by Mimi Khalvati at the Poetry School. I’m really looking forward to it - as well as being an outstanding poet, Mimi is one of the best teachers I’ve ever had (for any subject) and her classes are invariably full of talented and interesting writers. So this feels like my creative ‘reward’ for all that time I spent studying strategy, marketing and intellectual property.

If you’re interested in poetry, you can follow my reading and writing on my poetry blog, Mark McGuinness | poetry.

And if you’ve got any tips on finding space for creative pursuits in the midst of a pressing work schedule, please share them in the comments.

Technorati Tags: creative writing, poetry school, New Year’s Resolutions

I’ve just posted about the PC for Poets on Screen Two - my poetry blog. I’m mentioning it here as it’s too good to miss (the PC, not my poetry blog).

I discovered this video of the Reactable, a new music-making interface, via City of Sound and Peter Marsh.

Why do I find this so fascinating? I think it’s the way it opens up new creative possiblities via artificial synaesthesia.

According to the scientists, ‘true’ synaesthesia is a neurological condition in which one sense is involuntarily translated into another - e.g. colours are experienced as sounds or vice versa. It is popularly associated with psychedelic drugs, but can also result from a stroke, blindness or deafness. I encountered synaesthesia in my work as a hypnotherapist, as it’s a fairly common occurrence in trance subjects.

Synaesthesia and Creativity

Less extreme versions of synaesthesia, sometimes called ‘pseudo-synaesthesia’, are reported by many people as part of their normal thinking processes. This kind of everyday synaesthesia seems to be particularly common among artists and other creative types. Like a lot of poets, I experience a kind of grapheme-colour synaesthesia, whereby words (and numbers) are associated with particular colours. Louis MacNeice describes the phenomenon in his poem ‘When we were children’:

When we were children words were coloured
(Harlot and murder were dark purple)
And language was a prism, the light
A coloured inlay on the grass,

Another of my favourite examples of synaesthesia is the artist and writer Mervyn Peake. A brilliant draughtsman and illustrator, while writing his novel Titus Groan Peake made sketches of characters in the margin:

As I went along I made drawings from time to time which helped me to visualise the characters and to imagine what sort of things they would say. The drawings were never exactly as I imagined the people, but were near enough for me to know when their voices lost touch with their heads.
(Mervyn Peake, ‘How a Romantic Novel was Evolved’)

Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to Liz Strauss at Successful Blog for a very enjoyable chat on the phone yesterday and for featuring me in her Blogger A Day (B.A.D.) series.

Picking up from our blogging conversations, it was great fun swapping stories and ideas with Liz, about creativity, coaching and writing. I’m really impressed with the summary she’s written about my work - and I’m particularly pleased she picked up on the links between my blogging and poetry.

If you’ve not seen Successful Blog yet, you really should. Different bloggers have different strengths - with Liz, as well as producing a constant stream of thought-provoking content, she’s got a phenomenal ability to build a sense of community around her blog. Stopping by her comments section is like popping into a cafe in the middle of a lively discussion. And no matter how many people are there, she’ll remember who you are and give you a warm welcome.

The old sidebar was getting a bit congested so I’ve expanded into three columns - hope you like the new look. Thanks to Megat for the theme.

In other news, I’ve added a Books + Links page about Creative Careers, and here’s a gentle reminder that I’ll be part of a three-editor Magma team speaking at the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival tomorrow, about how we edit the magazine.

I ventured out to Russell’s coffee morning recently - very enjoyable and I can confirm that they let in non-planning types. I still find it slightly surreal meeting ‘people from blogging’ for the first time, there’s a slight feeling of weightlessness, as if we’ve just been teleported down. Plus I couldn’t put the blogs to the faces until I followed the links on Russell’s post (check them out) - I was almost going to type ’so you don’t know who they are until afterwards’ - but if course it’s the other way round, isn’t it?

I’ll be at the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival on 4th November, talking about my experience of editing Magma poetry magazine. Details on the Magma site and ‘next door’ on my poetry blog.

As I’m published in issue 35 of Magma poetry magazine, I’ll be reading a couple of my poems at the launch in London, 8pm tomorrow night 3rd July - details of the launch reading here. It would be great to see you there.

The guest poets will be Wendy Cope and Alicia Stubbersfield; you will also hear many other poets featured in the issue. Be warned, Magma readings are invariably packed out - so arrive early if you want a seat!

I’ve just launched Mark McGuinness|poetry, a blog about reading and writing poetry.

It includes links to my own poems and articles that are published elsewhere. Currently there’s a link to a recording of me reading a poem at the launch of The Wolf magazine No.3, and some of my reviews and articles for Magma. Other poems and articles will be added as they appear online in archives.

I will also be writing about poetry I’m currently reading and some of my old favourites. I originally intended to include all of my poetry posts on this blog, but it feels as though the poetry wants a space to itself. So the Wishful Thinking blog will continue to focus on media-neutral creativity and its application in business and the arts.

There will be some cross-over between the two blogs, with some posts (or parts of posts) appearing in both spaces, so the poetry has not been completely banished from Wishful Thinking - it’s just built an annexe of its own. Let me know what you think of it.

Technorati Tags: writing poetry

‘We cannot do the fantastic things based on the real, unless we first know the real.’ Walt Disney

Seth Godin has just posted on the subject of Real Creativity, where he argues that ‘Real business creativity comes from boundaries,’ and ‘Inventing something cool that can’t be implemented isn’t creative’.

Of course this is literally true, since creativity doesn’t become ‘real’ unless you make something out of it. But it’s clear that he also believes there is something inherently superior in the kind of creativity that sees the brilliant idea as the starting point, not the end product.

Walt Disney would have agreed with him. In his analysis of Disney’s approach to creativity and management, Robert Dilts draws attention to this description of Disney by one of his animators:

‘…there were actually three different Walts: the dreamer, the realist and the spoiler: you never knew which one was coming into your meeting.’ (Quoted in Strategies of Genius, Vol.1, Robert Dilts)

Dilts points out that this ability to play three very different but complementary roles was crucial to Disney’s creative and commercial success. Dreams are nothing without a realist around to make something happen. And the ’spoiler’ was Disney’s critical mindset, the side of him that took a long hard look at the work in progress, and decided whether the reality measured up to the dream - yet.

This is one of the models I use most often with clients, since so-called ‘creative blocks’ in the mind or ‘difficult people’ in the office are usually a sign that we are stuck in one role at the expense of the others.

Read the rest of this entry »

Technorati Tags: business creativity, Walt Disney