Beatty, E. & Ball, L.
Lancaster University
Poetry composition represents an excellent, if understudied, domain to examine from a cognitive perspective. It requires idea generation, balancing choices amongst multiple options, planning, revision and finally evaluation. While anyone can write a poem it takes a certain set of skills to write a good poem. Our research methodology is twofold. First, we have been conducting interviews with poets to gather reflective data on their creative processes and sources of inspiration. Second, we have been conducting laboratory-based studies of expert poets undertaking writing tasks while verbally reporting their thoughts using a ‘think aloud’ technique. The results of our studies indicated that initial idea generation is quite associative and is often related to items or instances that are close in proximity and/or time to the poet. Once an idea has been selected a search is again conducted focused around that idea and during this process an initial line is produced. This first line is greatly influential to the progress of the poem. While the writing is ongoing the poets seem to engage in self-questioning behaviour in response to writing blocks. It is the value and impact of the self directed questions that are explored in this analysis.