We start from doodles and sketches. And sometimes we make real plans, and sometimes we just start building. Building is at the heart of the experience.
Gever Tully

Like many writers, when starting the first line of a poem, I’m already thinking about what the last line will be. Too often I try to rush to the message, the meaning, the cause of the poem. Sometimes this works, but most times it causes a kind of ‘tear my hair out’ frustration. Luckily, certain ideas make it known very early that you’re in for the long stretch.

Last year, I developed a keen interest (or obsession) for hoodies. The hoodie not only as clothing but as a political term (hug a hoodie), a cultural dress (hip-hop hoods up), but also as a noun and adjective (those damn hoodies stole my phone!).

Slowly my interest has morphed into artistic/ sociological research that will eventually become some kind of ‘piece’. (a lovely ambiguous term). During my time as a guest booker on Open Notebooks, I’ll be sharing my process of building this idea. I’ll also be writing a new poem for the Open Notebooks project.

Big shout out to Karen for starting inviting me to take part!

This entry was posted on Monday, July 27th, 2009 at 1:29 pm and is filed under Yemisi Blake. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.