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 Spring.

1. What is your favourite poem about Spring? 

‘Dear Spring’ by Charles Simic. I like the idea of spring procrastinating, while we’re here in winter busying along.  

2. What, in your opinion, is the biggest Spring poetry cliché? 

That spring is a fresh start. I often feel that the processing we do across seasons makes me feel at odds with thoughts of renewal, we never went grey – we were always knitting under our bones, we were always moving towards something new. I see a fresh start in winter as much as I do in spring. 

3. Spring is an inspiring season, but an enormously well-trodden subject for poetry. How do you tackle a subject that has been hugely covered in the poetry canon already? Do you think that some subjects reach such a point of saturation that they should not be added to, or is there always a new way of looking at a subject?

Remember, there is only one you. It’s okay to repeat and overlap, but ultimately what you do is unique and different. You breathed three beats just now and I breathed two and a half. We can’t comb through every moment identically. Nothing is ever devoid of potential. The most interesting subjects can be the ones with narrower parameters simply by the fact they’ve been done a lot. That’s why I have been thinking about those big words like ‘kissing’ lately, there is such potential in tilting the angle you look at things through. 

4. What tools can we use to approach the topic of spring, or any well-trodden subject, in an original way? 

I think it’s important to think about global spring, global seasons. I also like to remind writers to consider ecological feminist frameworks, that’s why I love poets like Alycia Pirmohamed, and their other writings too. I also like to combine strange flavour combinations like nursery sandwiches. I put carnivals with couches. 

5. Have you written about spring? Why or why not? If yes, what inspired you? 

I have, though perhaps not consciously. I see my poems as a measure of psychic time and sometimes spring comes in there, like a character. 

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.