In our Craft Capsule series, authors reveal the personal and particular ways they approach the art of writing. This is no. 237.
While writing my poetry collection, Scream / Queen, I found it natural to compare my project to other recent books I admired. Though it was invaluable to study other writers closely, constantly comparing myself to their poems made it easy to imitate rather than craft the original structure needed for my work.
Eventually, I turned to guidance from a different medium: music albums. As part of the process of writing my collection, I pushed myself to listen to 150 albums to see what structural ideas emerged on the page. Exploring the techniques behind composing a cohesive musical project helped me realize what experience I wanted my poetry to evoke for readers and how to provide that experience in my book. One invaluable lesson for crafting Scream / Queen came from studying the worlds crafted through concept albums.
Each poetry collection constructs and operates within a specific universe of subjects, speakers, and stakes. It’s the coordination among these elements that generates momentum from piece to piece. While fiction writers often lead conversations about world-building, the practice holds lessons for poets assembling their work into a cohesive manuscript. Poetry collections and concept albums are incredibly similar to fictional world-building.
While a conventional album might be a loose collection of independent songs, a concept album presents a cohesive vision or narrative. A central theme guides musical and lyrical elements. Successful concept albums render a nearly palpable atmosphere. During the challenge I presented for myself—listening to 150 albums—I was most enchanted by the works with rich but meaningful sonic complexity, where variations in the song type matched a progression in a narrative or conflict. These concept albums also established themselves as highly curated, produced objects. Masterful mixing as well as elements like simulated phone calls and skits between characters filled out the musical stories. Ethel Cain’s Preacher’s Daughter, Lord Huron’s Long Lost, and Brent Faiyaz’s Wasteland are some masterful concept albums that inspired me.
As you plot out your collection’s arc, consider the world your poems come from. What is at stake and for whom? For Scream / Queen, I created different conceptual diagrams to track the speaker in each poem and reflect on how they interacted with other figures in the work. I then mapped how the poems related to one another. Stepping away from writing also helped break my habit of hyper-focusing on editing a poem. Zooming out allowed me to see the whole work for what it was: the themes, the moments that complemented one another, and the gaps that remained.
Consider how you draw attention to the collection’s conceptual framework on the page. Examine how the narrative complements or creates tension with the poems’ structural qualities. Are there textual or formal elements you might repeat to amplify the stakes? For instance, some concept albums have a melody appear across multiple tracks and gain new meaning with each iteration. How might a recurring poetic form like the sonnet or technique like erasure serve as a touchstone for readers? Formal variation, ordering choices, and the sectioning of poems all reveal the contours of a book’s world.
CD Eskilson is a trans nonbinary poet, editor, and translator. They are a recipient of the C.D. Wright / Academy of American Poets Prize, as well as a Best of the Net, Best New Poets, and Pushcart Prize nominee. Their debut poetry collection, Scream / Queen, is out now from Acre Books.
image credit: Blaz Photo