“The Ode Less Travelled” by Stephen Fry

A couple of years ago I searched the Library catalogue for a (hard copy) book on how to write poetry, but this one didn’t come up.   I’ve just checked the catalogue and they do have this, but only as an e-book or a talking book.  I’ve learned that the subject I should have searched for is ‘Poetry – Authorship’.

I’ve been doing a course on formal poetry with Joanna Preston, and this book was on her recommended reading list.  A friend kindly lent me her copy.  I loved Stephen Fry’s gentle introduction to writing poetry, although I couldn’t bring myself to follow his suggestion of marking the stresses in a book which belongs to a friend.  An early exercise suggested writing random lines in iambic pentameter – very useful when my course homework was a sonnet.

Stephen Fry has an attractive chatty style with witty asides, and his personally written examples of various types of poems are enjoyable and impressive.  I’m pleased this book lacks the scatological comments which put me off his autobiography.

This is an erudite book, sometimes with more information than I want, but it would be an indispensable reference book.  My course is now finished and I probably won’t read more of this book, but I may well return to Diane Lockward’s “The Crafty Poet – A Portable Workshop” which I bought two years ago.

“Stephen Fry is just the thing
to help the muse when you’re writing.”