The art of seeing by Jane Walters

I’ve recently returned from leading one of my regular Ready Writers Retreats, in lovely Morecambe Bay. I like to include a poetry workshop as part of the week and, although the content changes from year to year, I always start by making a few similar observations. My chief motivation is to get any reluctant poets on-side, remembering my inner chuntering at school when faced with similar horrors. I’m not going to repeat everything here (why, you’d have to come along for that!) but want to focus on one point: poets see the world differently.

I deliver this annual workshop in the presence of an award-winning poet, who certainly doesn’t need either my teaching or my encouragement, and he always nods (and I breathe a sigh of relief) when I say this. 

What do I mean?

Well, when you look at the care that a poet takes over the words, the form and so on, you have to appreciate that it doesn’t start at the moment they touch pen to paper. It doesn’t even really start in their imagination or creative mind, either. The essential step before that is that they observe to a heightened extent. (For those with poor, little, or no eyesight, that sense of observing comes through non-visual cues, but the basis is similar.) 

They look.

They see.

They take notice.

This is more than semantics, or synonym-finding.

The fact is, that if the poet is to call attention to life’s details, as I put it in my presentations, then they first have to physically (if they can) and metaphorically open their eyes.

The reason I teach this stuff is not necessarily to produce more poets, though that’s not a bad intention. It’s because it applies to all of us, perhaps especially as we are Christian writers. When you consider the beauty of God’s creation, for example: how many rush by and don’t spot that primrose growing in a ditch, or the way the light catches that person’s face? (Interestingly, I read only this week a quote endorsing walking as the only means of transport, because everything else takes us too quickly past what we should be noticing.)

We don’t include details of the senses, or description, or emotions, just because it makes for better writing. We include them because they expand our appreciation of what is around us – even when it is fictional – and in turn pass that onto our readers.

Jane Walters is Chair of ACW, leader of Green Pastures Christian Writers, and

writing retreat facilitator.

She is currently working on a new devotional to be published by BRF Ministries in 2026.

www.janewyattwalters.com

Insta: @readywritersretreats