If you’re still with me, I want to say one quick(ish) thing about poetry.
I love it...
I love its depth. Its passion. Its profundity. Its multiple insights into the human condition.
I love the way it plays with words. I love how it deals with the essence.
I love its pith.
I even love reading another poet’s work & going: Sheesh, why do I even bother. She has just nailed it. Or: I can’t believe he managed to say something that complicated, so simply. You may as well pop your pen down.
But I don’t. I keep trying. Barely a day goes by where I don’t write a poem or poem fragment or edit a poem. Often several of these options, executed with varying degrees of skill. I swear there’s something wrong with my brain which seems to exist purely to say – that’s a good idea write that down, or there’s a poem in that image, or an image in that mood, or a mood in that play of light. Or whatever. Constantly. 24 / 7. Every book I read, every time I go driving, every conversation I have. Write it, write it, write it. & every so often, something comes along & you go wow! that was pretty darn good. Which keeps me going.
Barely a day goes by where I don’t read a poem by someone else. I just love it. I only wish more people read it. But I understand why they don’t. Because there’s three types of poetry.
Bad poetry: type 1 – because it’s banal.
Bad poetry: type 2 – because it’s wanky & esoteric.
Good poetry – everything else.
Poetry has to say something (not that’s been said before type 1; nor in ways no one can decipher, type 2) but in a way that is unique, interesting, different. In a way that pulls you up, makes you stop, think, be startled, engage the person on the other side of the words. (Writing this after assembling the 30 poems previous – I’m suddenly paranoid I don’t stop startle engage the reader enough – but hopefully it’s just pre-uploading paranoia.)
Poetry is plucking at the heartstrings, & making music with them.
As that great artist & thinker, Salman Rushdie perfectly captured it -- A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, & stop it going to sleep.
That’s what I hope to do. Name. Point. Provoke. Argue. Shape. STOP THE WORLD GOING TO SLEEP.
& discover a world of readers who wanna stay awake with me . . .