Dreams and Creative Writing

[Kirree]

Source: A Dreamer's Companion by Stephen Phillip Policoff

In the next few posts, I've reproduced some breif poems and stories based on dreams to give you a quick glance at how your dreams can feed your creative writing. Read them and then try it yourself. Remember, creativity isn't about the product; it's about the process. You may not come up with anything that you like at first, but as with any new exercise, you can get good at it if you keep pushing - and keep dreaming!

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The process of falling asleep and dreaming is itself an intriguing area to explore creatively. We all know how strange the border between waking and sleep can feel - why not try to capture it in words (or in color or in sounds)? In this first poem, the author compares the time before we fall asleep to the calm before a storm, a time when senses are heightened and the universe seems more alive.

rising storm catches dream
sitting alone
in wet buggy night
watching the cat-eye moon
cast shadows of haze
upon the grass in my yard.
i see fog ghosts arise
and dance high above the trees
while winds part lips
(and whisper)
about the coming
of the storm
and drifting between sleep
head heavy life rocks catching waves.
I listen
to the buzz of mosquito bodies
(turning to dust)
and the splash of the sprinkler
washing them away.
~ Amy Garbo

[Kirree]

The act of remembering dreams - or trying to remember them, failing to remember them, or feeling like that dream memory is just the tip of your mind - is also a useful subject for poetic exploration. Famous dead authors like Edgar Allan Poe and Samuel Taylor Coleridge are celebrated for poems that seek to recapture the elesive romance of dream life. But you don't have to be famous (or dead) to try it yourself.
In this peice, the poet conjures up a lost world that is personal yet contains some familiar dream archetypes as well.

Droplet
I had forgotten about you,
the joys you bestowed,
the precious hours we spent together.
when I was alone
I forgot all of my dreams
when I dived into those painful pictures
vividly drawn in my head.
Take me back again, I beg,
steal me to that land
where trees are black, the sky green
and red rivers flood their banks.
Let us ride that white horse of feathers,
let us fly the unreachable clouds.
Let me fall asleep amongst
yellow tulips on blue sand.
I will close my eyes and restore
that blanket that transformed
into a shining white angel
with hair of gold.
Untouched by day, a knight by night
you will absorb my soul.
Drowned and without body I'll float
now I am light as a droplet.
I can see my rusted green fairies
with their light pink hair.
I can feel my silken robe
liquifying with the air.
The castle covered with fern now stands,
her gates open to me.
She will sing Ovid's poetry
while I travel her hands.
I am asleep on the bed below,
his velvet surrounds shivering souls.
I bathe in a lake of silver tears
and with creatures unseen, unknown,
eat grapes on her soft lavender shore.
The fairies dance farewell
when you come down from your clouds.
And I sleep last time amongst soft grass.
last lime breathing your breath.
~Pelin Batu

[Kirree]

The next writer often uses her dreams in writing poetry, though the poems are not necessarily about the dreams themselves but about images and ideas and ways of looking at the world that her dreams help clarify for her.
In "Feverish," the poet has taken several dream images (mermaids, a dog, an angry father) from different moments in her life and woven them into an hallucinatory poem.

Feverish
In third grade
I used to draw pictures
of beautiful mermaids with
huge sparkling tails
but I lived on land
in my backyard, in the city.
My teacher said
that they lived in water
where they could swim free
and I told him no,
that sometimes they get tired.
Sometimes,
when the night is dark
and the sea is deep,
deep blue
mermaids crawl out onto
land, flipping
their emerald tails
against the beach.
They slither out of the water
because they cannot bear
to swim anymore.
They tire of being mermaids.
My teacher told me
whales do that same thing
fling themselves onto
the sand.
He said they died
when they did that.
Dogs sense anger.
When the room
is filled with screaming,
they curl up with their
tails and whimper sympathetically.
My father explained that to me
and while he was smoking
at the kitchen table
I started to argue
about the dog's sixth sense.
We fought
and he stood up with his hands
on the back of the chair.
The dog barked and jumped
at the window
aching to get out
A bulging vwin
in your forehead
crawling right up the middle
means you are a genius.
If you lean up close to someone
and feel the blood
running through the
smooth frontal skin
it should be considered
very carefully
and reverently.
Yesturday
you help me
up, off the floor
so that my wet tail
did not scrape against
the cracking tile,
You said you were going
to carry me back to sea.
And for a second
my cheek was close
to your forehead.
I was afraid that vein
would burst.
You were wonderful, wanting
to help me live
but I guess you haven't heard
about mermaids' passion
for resting their bodies
on land.
You pleaded that I go back with you
to the fresh blue ocean.
While I slowly breathed air
never meant for me,
my dog whimpered at your kindness.

[Kirree]

About the following poem, the author recalls, "I went into New York and saw this exhibit of Edward Hopper paintings. They were really bleak and powerful, with all these amazing faces. That night, I dreamed about the paintings, and the dream became this poem."

When Edward Spoke
"I'm tired,"
he said.
"These woman are killing me.
Let me tell you."
The one who will not look
up from her cup of tea;
whose hat is a morose frown
on her small hand,
dropping down over her thoughts
like a rainbow over
a forsaken child,
The one who turns
away from her lover
while he thrashes to sleep;
who dresses too quickly after
making love - afraid of
the moonlight
and the tender curves of her
arms that may again
reach out for him.
And more than anything
the one who will not turn
her head, whose face
is never known;
whose hands are folded
just so, keeping her breasts
a perfect secret.
The one who will not turn her head;
whose attention is not on me
whose lips are smeared
with the rouge of loneliness.
And when you enter
this city you can see the shadow
of a tunnel,
the side of buildings.
But these women
you cannot imagine,
do not even remember
until you are peeking
through a glass window
at suppertime.
Your own wife cooking at home
waiting for you to return
And you are lost here.
"I am so happy,"
he said,
"that everyone else seems
sad to me.
But at night I am alone.
There is silence
There is stillness.
And I murmer to myself
that the moon is like a mad woman
rising from her tomb
searching to find lovers
as I am searching to forget lovers.
It is then I am afraid
that I have neve been happy,
rather so miserable
that I have misplaced my joy."
And he switched off the light.
~ Michelle Tupko