A quest for poems
I was very young when I started writing poetry. I was encouraged at school and at home, and as it did not require so many words or so much plot as a story, there were obvious appeals. I learned something of structures. In my teens, looser verses became a way of venting and managing my emotions. Poetry as therapy isn’t unusual, but it’s often best if that material never falls on anyone else. I went to poetry classes at uni, both studying poetry as a writing form and getting opportunities to have a go. There were more structures to learn.
While I’ve worked hard with other writing forms, I confess that poetry has mostly been a hobby. I’ve used it as a place to pour out emotion, and to try and make sense of things. I’ve used it on occasion to court people (not always very effectively). It occurs to me that I haven’t written poetry for other people in the way I write short stories, essays, novels and non-fiction books.
A whole other voice comes into play in the poetry I like reading. It bypasses the banal in search of an essence. It speaks from soul to soul, and is more innately spiritual than story telling. Evocative, sometimes moving towards incantation, it breaths life as well as ideas.
I’ve started to think of poetry in terms of a desire to communicate with other people. Not just in a ‘would like to get in your pants’ sense. That in turn raises questions about what it might be worth saying. What can I not capture effectively in a blog post? What wouldn’t be better told as a short story? Sometimes the answer lies in the brevity. There’s a lot more intensity in a small poem than in pages of text; a sense of distillation and focus. If I really want to make a point, then sometimes the limitations of a poem are vastly useful in terms of getting right into the topic. There are issues of utility, too. I can take a poem or a short story to a ritual, but not an essay or a novel.
I have dabbled in putting poetry out in public, there are some print collections over at Lulu (free downloads in the book section of this site). They were written as and when they occurred to me, with no particular intent. I’ve depended on emotional energy and inspiration as and when it turns up. I’m experimenting at the moment with setting out to write poetry, and I do have overall intentions to guide what I’m doing. So far it seems to be going along passably well. I’m learning how not to feel too precious about first drafts. In any other form, the first draft is just a jumping off point, but I’ve tended to either hatch a poem at first try, or give up on it and move on. Learning how to go back and work at it is interesting. I’m learning to take notes, jotting down odd lines, phrases and ideas when they occur to me, and seeing if I can connect them up in a meaningful way at some later point. It’s a bit like sketching.
What any of this achieves remains to be seen, but I like to feel that I’m stretching myself and trying new ways of writing. Whatever else comes of the poetry, I know that focusing down on my use of words will improve me as a writer, and exploring other forms of expression helps keep me fresh, and stops me getting into ruts and habits.
I’m also taking it as a prompt to read more poetry, because I feel very strongly that if you don’t read in a subject or form, your scope for writing it well is much reduced.
