The Birth of Clunky Narratives
“Clunky” is usually an insult. It’s the word writers are told to edit out — the sign of a sentence that lost its footing. Clunky Narratives take that word back.
Before it became a concept, it was a search — a search for a form capable of holding stories, memories, history and emotion that didn’t fit into traditional structures. Clunky Narratives were born from writing stories and from reading poets such as Emily Dickinson and Ted Joans, whose work showed me how powerful concentrated forms of expression could be. I wanted to discover a form where complex thoughts, memories and experiences could exist in a concentrated space — even when that space felt uneven, interrupted, or hard to smooth over.
That search eventually led me to Manchester Writing School, where I was interviewed by Jeffrey Wainwright and Michael Schmidt. That experience gave me the space to explore poetry, language and experimental writing in far greater depth, and to start formalising what had, until then, only existed as instinct.
Wainwright’s assessment of the portfolio identified the method before it had a name:
There are several ambitious ‘open field’ poems here like ‘Bogey‘ and ‘Herbless Pursuit‘. I think he has been beneficially influenced here by reading he did for a ‘Reading Poems’ essay on Charles Olson. Something he manages well by this method is narrative. So often this is a clunky difficulty in verse, but the sparky, jump-cut manner on ‘Herbless Pursuit’ enables the reader to intuit what’s going on, and catches well the nod-and-wink element of its subject. ‘Pass 23/10 33‘ doesn’t use the page in the same way but has similar quality, and I like the oblique way that the number on the door pass becomes a motif. The prose poem ‘Rambling‘ quietly takes its subject for its form. It’s a very genial poem, happily gauche, funny and involving.
— Jeffrey Wainwright, portfolio assessment, Manchester Writing School
Clunky Narratives evolved from a tension: the tension between expression and limitation, between finding one’s voice and wrestling with the English language itself.
As the son of Jamaican parents, my relationship with language has been shaped by history — including the legacy of slavery, displacement, and the loss of ancestral language. English became both a tool of expression and a reminder of histories where voices were taken away. That’s a lifelong negotiation: learning to master a language while questioning the structures and traditions that surround it.
Clunky Narratives emerged from that tension. They are the transformation of tension, fragmentation and uncertainty into creative expression — a recognition that language doesn’t always arrive smoothly. Sometimes ideas are complicated, memories are incomplete, and emotions resist traditional forms. Rather than editing that resistance away, a Clunky Narrative keeps it in view.
The concept has also been shaped by poets like Charles Olson, T.S. Elliot, Sylvia Plath, Hart Crane, Robert Lowell and Anne Sexton — writers whose work explored intense inner worlds and the complexities of human experience, and who proved that vulnerability and contradiction could become sources of artistic power.
But Clunky Narratives aren’t defined by suffering. They’re defined by transformation.
What Makes It “Clunky,” and What Makes It a Narrative?
A Clunky Narrative deliberately uses disruption, imbalance, fragmentation and linguistic friction as creative devices. What might traditionally be dismissed as “clunky” becomes an opportunity to reveal something beneath the surface.
The difference between accidental clumsiness and a Clunky Narrative is intention. Accidental clunkiness happens when writing loses direction. A Clunky Narrative transforms disruption into an art form — an uneven structure, an unexpected turn, an unusual choice of language becomes part of the meaning, not a failure to reach it.
The concept also pushes back against the idea that poetry and storytelling belong to a particular class, education or literary tradition. Language should stay open and available to everyone. Poetry shouldn’t be restricted by form, status or expectation. Everyone has the right to experiment. Everyone has the right to express.
This isn’t about making writing imperfect for its own sake. It’s about recognising that imperfection, tension and struggle can hold their own kind of beauty — that sometimes the cracks in language are where the deepest meanings emerge.
Clunky Narratives are a metamorphosis: transforming fragments, contradictions and difficult histories into new expressions of human experience. They are not a rejection of language, but a reimagining of what language can become.
To explore the wider concept and principles behind Clunky Narratives, visit:
The Concept of Clunky Narratives.
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