Inspiring People

Getting Started

I started writing as a kid and haven’t stopped since. As the time came to leave school I began thinking about jobs that would allow me to write. A friend’s mother suggested advertising. I didn’t know a lot about it, but I bought the trade magazines and liked what I read. The Agency world seemed an exciting, even glamorous place. But, of course you had to get in. I managed to get a job in the advertising department of a musical instrument company and soon found myself organising photo shoots for Louis Armstrong, Harry James, Bert Weedon and the likes. I was also allowed to do some writing. And those specimens, brochures and small ads, got me a job in an advertising agency three years later.

The Agency Game

The agency world is one of change. People move from one agency to another quite frequently. After my work on Camay, Maxwell House and other well known brands I was head-hunted and joined Ogilvy & Mather, then one of the most creative agencies in London. Fay Weldon was amongst the writers working there.

They and I were joined by Salman Rushdie who was working on his best seller, Midnight’s Children which I was lucky enough to read in manuscript form. We spent three years together working on amongst others, Sainsbury’s, American Express, Aero, Toffee Crisp, Shell Petrol and ICI.

Writing a thriller?

I had been thinking about writing a book myself, a thriller, featuring a hard boiled detective in the style of Raymond Chandler. Enter Willie Halliday. I used my own interest in Buddhism, and made him a Buddhist. A private eye with a difference. It turned out to be a good idea and got me a three book contract with a publisher of art books who was starting a crime imprint. The first two books were well received both here and in the states. But the publisher’s main business – art books – was losing money and they were sold. No more Willie Halliday.

Back to the drawing board!

I had always been interested in poetry and even tried my hand at it when I was younger. Something drew me to it again and I soon realised that poetry had changed beyond recognition since my schooldays. A revolution had taken place.

Of course, the old forms, sonnets, villanelles, quatrains etc were there if you wanted to use them. But just as we had freed ourselves from the last generation’s rigid patterns of life, so poetry had freed itself from its previously formal conventions. In the words of the Chilean poet Nicanor Parra, the only rule a poet must follow (today) is “to improve the page”.

We all read poetry

The truth is we all read poetry everyday without thinking about it. The lyrics of a song are a form of poetry. Passages of prose in a novel, or a magazine, can be poetry.

Recently Carol Ann Duffy, the poet laureate, said that tweeting was a form of poetry. And I agree. It is just another form of it. Poetry is simply prose.

And it was that realisation that made me think that I could write poetry. I found it a liberating experience, an immediate, fresh form of communication. It had taken me six months and several drafts to write a book. It might take just a morning to write a poem. And you can work on several poems at once. It is today’s novel. Poetry offers you a story, drama, love, death, humour, often with a twist. Subjects are everywhere, something you see on a walk, a phrase that comes into your head or you hear.

Hearing is important.

Poetry is meant to be read aloud. Much of the poetry from a thousand years ago was never written down, it was performance driven. You can’t possibly get everything out of a poem until you read it aloud, the pauses, the white space on the page in a poem are as important as the words.

It is a photograph, a series of snapshots of modern life – rather than an oil painting. I believe poetry has a place in everyone’s life. Try it – reading and writing it. You won’t be sorry. You can get a taste of my writing by going to www.mikefredman.com. On it you’ll find recommended poems and poets, some of my ‘stuff’ and guest poems. Why not write one and send it to me.

But above all please buy my book.

Just £5.85 at Amazon it will make a unique Christmas gift! (Or you might decide to keep it yourself).