How to write a litany like Billy Collins
We are in Week 3 of my RESTORE season of creative writing workshops for paid subscribers (& Week 2 of Thursday mornings in East Grinstead!). I would love to tell you that the whole season is planned out in advance (and I would love to have it all planned out in advance as well) but really, I begin with a feeling and then create a document where I keep all my links, poems and ideas that could be loosely connected. Then each week, intuitively, while taking notice of what’s happening in the world, I pick something to work with.
This week, it was a poem by Billy Collins - Litany. I am not sure how it ended up in my ideas document or how I came across it, though I do have his book Nine Horses on my shelves.
Either way, I love a list poem and I loved the contrasting concrete images in this Billy Collins poem. It also seemed like a poem that could be used as a frame in a creative writing workshop. It is interesting to notice how often you can take the fragments of the beginnings of existing lines to create your own work. I do this with books (novels, memoirs) as well as academic essays and poems. I look at the structure, then create my own using that structure as a draft, then rewrite with my own words and ideas.
For example, with the Billy Collins poem, you can take this frame:
You are…
You are…
You are…
However, you are not…
And you are certainly not…
There is just no way that you are…
It is possible that you are…
It might interest you to know…
I also happen to be…
I am also…
But don’t worry…
You are still…
You will always be…
Also, in this poem, Billy Collins has taken the first two lines from a poem by Jacques Crickillon. So if you are using other people’s lines or frames in this way, and you want to publish them, always credit the source. If you use it as part of your writing process, and nothing remains of your inspiration poem in the end, then there is no need to credit it.
I enjoy seeing when people respond to and credit the work of other poets - it is like a conversation in poetry through time.
So - a litany is a type of list poem. It is a prayer and can have a chanting or monotonous tone to it. And there is a call and response element to it.
I like the way that in the Billy Collins poem, he starts off addressing someone else “you” (second person), then shifts to the point of view of the poem’s speaker “I” (first person).
To get us going in the workshop on Tuesday, I invited everyone to write a list of restorative things. This is such a lovely thing to do in itself on a grey day in January. You can absolutely stop here.
I suggested they include some of these things and to describe in concrete, specific details:
objects
weather
actions (things you do)
smells
sights
sounds
tastes
textures
references to the natural world (eg animals, fruit, birds, sky).
Then, I invited them to write a list of things that were definitely not restorative to end up with a list of jarring opposites.
I shared the Billy Collins poem and taking the lists as starting points, we wrote our own poems. I stayed very close to the frame of the original in mine but other people wrote in their own way. I loved the images that came up and the way that using concrete images helped the listener evoke different feelings.
Here is my poem:
You are the waves at Caswell bay,
the forest gorse flowers and wild garlic in spring.
You are a bowl of porridge on a winter’s morning
and a car journey through fog.
You are a cat heavy on my lap
and loud music in a room of people.
However, you are not the wind in my hair,
a log fire when there’s snow outside,
or a walk to the Totoro tree.
And you are certainly not lemon balm tea steam.
There is just no way that you are lemon balm tea steam.
It is possible that you are a swim in the reservoir on a blue sky day,
maybe even Mary Oliver’s poetry,
but you are not even close to being a basket overflowing with blankets.
It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am a snuggly bed after a busy few days.
I also happen to be the full moon with wisps of cloud,
the fox crossing the empty night road
and the brown bowl of pink lychees on the sideboard.
But don’t worry, I’m not the waves at Caswell Bay.
You are still the waves at Caswell Bay.
You will always be the waves at Caswell Bay,
not to mention the forest gorse flowers —and somehow—the wild garlic in spring.