The darkest hour

April marks the mental beginning of summer, though on the skin and in the air it began at least a fortnight ago. Mangoes, neem flowers, the end of exams and the beginning of holidays all signify that the days are indubitably getting longer.

If we were aestivating creatures, we would go to ground for the next two or three months and emerge with the rains. Instead, we suffer. Or if we can, we adjust our body clocks and sleep through the unbearable afternoons.

And if you sleep deeply in the afternoons and then wake up, you will be familiar with that disorientating sense of heaviness and disconnection with your body.

This month, I am asking you to disorientate yourself before you write.

Only, instead of in the afternoon, I ask you to wake in the night, at least three hours into your sleep - but while it's still dark outside - and write in the dark.

Yes, I want you to actually write in the dark. That means no writing on phones, tablets, laptops or anything with a glowing screen. No torches, candles, lighting devices on pens or paper.

Go to bed with a notebook and sharpened pencil beside you. When you wake, sit in the dark and become aware of yourself and your surroundings. Think about what it feels like to wake up, and that from a state of deep sleep.

If what you have are sensations, record them in your notebook. It is likely that your words will be indecipherable later in the light, and that your lines will have overwritten themselves. That doesn't matter.

Activate your memory in this state of in-between-ness. Memorise the phrases and words that occur to you. Remember their sequence. Remember your dreams and their nonlinear images and conversations.

This is not merely an exercise in note-taking. Now, some time after you've been awake, bring these thoughts and notes and words together into a poem. Remember: you are still writing in the dark. You can't turn on any lights in order to read your notes; you must know them well because you wrote them not so very long ago.

If you don't remember, sit still in the dark and allow your thoughts to gather into your person and your consciousness. This is the one time of the day when you are not fragmented into the many things that are required of you, or into the twenty open tabs on your browser.

Write your poem. Go back to sleep.

When you wake up, look at your poem afresh. If it is very different from what you would otherwise write - and I hope it will be! - don't erase those differences when you revise.

Revise minimally and mainly for length. Don't impose outside structures on the poem you wrote in the dark. For instance, if you wrote it without rhymes, don't try and shape it into a poem with a rhyme scheme and a metre; or, if you don't understand what you meant by a phrase or sequence of words that occurred to you in the dark, don't change it to make it more comprehensible. Allow the mystery of that hour to remain in your poem.

Of course, this will be most effective as an exercise if you do this without cheating. So please submit the poem you actually wrote in the dark. And please actually write the poem in the dark, after a half-finished sleep.

Title your poem, keep it under 20 lines and mail your submissions to thesidewaysdoor@gmail.com by April 20th.

Enjoy your sleep!