How to: Writing, across the Seasons

In this series, we interview our tutors about poetry and its place in their world. These interviews will cover creative writing tips, excelling in a poetry workshop, building a literary career, and finding your poetic voice. Here’s Tice Cin discussing how to write about Winter.

1. How does the winter season influence your poetry? Do you find that the colder, quieter atmosphere inspires certain themes or moods in your writing? 

I tend to take stock over winter as work dries up in the colder months lately. It can leave you in your head sometimes but that isn’t always a bad thing. My writing tends to think more about form in winter, I trace back over the shape of my poems and want to see if they’ve had time to settle into themselves. This isn’t a quiet process, it’s like a jack-in-the-box popping out on you that was there all along.

2. Winter can often bring feelings of introspection or melancholy. How do you channel these emotions into your poetry, and what advice do you have for others looking to do the same? 

I think my emotions sit outside of the seasons a little, but perhaps the way I interpret them changes in winter. I have recently started to associate the summer, that frenzy as we edge into the bank holiday weekend, as a period of melancholy, so in a way – winter feels like a bit of a relief. With that being said, I think channeling emotions into poetry is an act of forgiveness – you must forgive your heart for feeling how it feels and let that come out. Last weekend it was so cold that my landlord told me to let the water run from the back garden tap slightly so that the pipes don’t burst. I ended up writing a poem about that. I think you need to let that flow happen.

3. What strategies do you use to stay motivated and creative when winter’s shorter days and colder weather might make it tempting to hibernate rather than write? 

I always found motivation a funny word. Writing to me feels like a bit of thread that sometimes I let go of, yet always want to reach for. But it does not go away. It blows gently in front of my eyelashes. I can retrieve it when my physical and mental health opens that step up for me. Which brings me back to this question more closely, I think it’s just really important.

4. For those who struggle with the winter blues, how can poetry be a tool for reflection and emotional expression during this season? What tips would you offer for turning winter’s challenges into poetic inspiration? 

I think reframing challenges is important. I try to look at the worst, bleakest thing and see something in my poetics as a way of pouring the light back in. The beauty of writing poetry also comes from the fact that another poet has felt what we have felt in some way before, so I read, I read, and I read. I listen. I take in the poetry of my mother’s advice. There is always something to take in, that you can then tint the challenges with. We know things can be bad, but we know they are not rigid in that grief.

Tice Cin is an interdisciplinary artist from North London. She experiments in the space of portals. She has an MA in English: Issues in Modern Culture from UCL. Tice has acted and performed at venues such as Victoria and Albert Museum, The Roundhouse, and Barbican’s Pit Theatre, and has been commissioned by organisations like Cartier, St. Paul’s Cathedral and Montblanc. She was named one of Complex Magazine’s best music journalists of 2021 and 2022, and has written for places such as DJ Mag and Mixmag. She runs Neoprene Genie which has its roots in working within her communities to plug talented people into new rooms – through this her team have made films, community parties with the likes of Scorcher outside Edmonton Green Station, and more. The aim is to make something out of nothing, increasingly important to her amidst the ruptures of systemic bias and global wealth gaps. 

A DJ and music producer, she is preparing to release an accompanying album for Keeping the House with a host of talented features including those from the creative house she is part of, Fwrdmtn, such as Kareem Parkins-Brown and Latekid. Keeping the House has been named one of Guardian’s Best Books of 2021, and has been featured in The Scotsman, The New York Times, and the Washington Post. She is a recent recipient of a Society of Authors Somerset Maugham Prize, and was shortlisted for Book of the Year at the British Book Awards. A filmmaker, she is currently writing and co-directing three short films. She has just produced, self-funded, and directed her first and second short films.