Poems on the Open Road: Writing While Traveling

If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I'm currently on a small road trip to the East Coast. While packing, I decided to leave my larger Moleskine notebook, which contains most of my creative work, at home in favor of the smaller, more compact model I have. The choice reminded of an article I wrote for this blog back in April, in which I discussed the differences between a low and high tech approach to writing.

Since then, I've had a bunch of conversations with readers about the different tools they employ when writing poetry. Unsurprisingly, most are big pen-and-paper fans, but there are some who say they only compose electronically now. I was delighted to discover that a fair number of people are still using typewriters, but we all know that those don't travel well.

All poetry is tied to experience in one way or another, and the way we record those experiences says a lot about us as individual writers. Some people prefer to write as they go, while others take in all they can and save the writing for afterwards. To quote William Wordsworth: "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility." Whether you agree or not, Wordsworth's preference is clear: experience now, write later.

Because of technological limitations, many writers have done the same. Jack Kerouac, after living the events of his novel On the Road, sat down and composed the entire book on one continuous role of paper. It just goes to show you that sometimes the story of how something was written can become just as famous as the writing itself.

With all the technology available to us today, recording something as it's happening has become easier than ever. That's really what Twitter and smartphones are all about. And we all know that "realtime" is probably the most popular term used in the tech community today. Certainly being a realtime poet while traveling has its advantages, but Wordsworth wouldn't have approved of that initial observation becoming the final poem.

It seems to come down to a single question: is your poetry an observation or a recollection? The answer is in how you write. In our realtime world, there's certainly nothing wrong with a quick spurt of emotion, but there's also something to be said for a more sluggish reflection. Which do you prefer?