12
Learn to trust the first thing that comes into your head
(or at least entertain it!)
Not uncritically, but for a starting point.
Keep a dream diary.
Get into the habit of writing dreams down the moment you wake. Or alternatively
using the voice recorder on your phone.
This habit can lead to the direct (and also the indirect)
creation of poems.
On waking, you have typically about fifteen seconds in which to recall
as much of the dream as you can before it may well be gone for good. Of course
what you retrieve will generally only be partial... that gives you an opportunity to imaginatively fill in the gaps.
Dreams do a lot of jumping about … the dots to join are a
fair way apart. Read Lewis Carroll and you get the idea.
That could be a very good thing for poetry making, because the best poetry often involves mind (and heart) leaps of some sort.
Equally it’s your waking work, as a poet, to do enough of
the connecting to make the dream-derived plot and imagery an accessible and worthwhile place for your reader. In other words it's a bit optimistic to think that the dream will give you the whole poem for go to woe. Though it can happen.
The more you think and talk about dreams and the more you record, the more you will dream and the more you will remember. It's potentially a virtuous cycle!
The dream recollection habit is productive in another
way too. It gets you used to the idea that you start the day with an
idea for a poem. It gets you used to the idea that there are words and images and observations (new ways of seeing the world / new worlds to see!) worth
beginning with the moment you wake up. And if your first ideas are worth entertaining then your next ideas can be too. Taking dreamleavings seriously is a way of taking your thoughts and feeling more seriously generally. The daydream is one of the royal roads to poetry too!
Whether it's for recording dreams or daydreams, or any ideas at all, have a notebook (or other recording device) with you at all times. Take seriously your first thoughts, your second thoughts and all of the subsequent thoughts as well.
