Why I write Poetry
I fell in love with
poetry. When I remember my childhood, and hearing humorous verse,
like Spike Milligan's 'Silly Old Baboon' or Pam Ayres, 'Oh, I wish,
I'd looked after me teeth'. I liked limericks and the Nonsense of
Edward Lear, Connecting later with bleaker and more haunting work,
through Richard Adams Novel, 'Watership Down'.
I later wrote my first
poem, for an assignment in 2nd year English, about a crow,
settling on a branch, in the midst of a wind storm. As instructed, I
used all the alliteration, and similes I could think of, as I tried
to ape the melancholic style and bleak imagery of Richard Adams. For
me, at the time, it was oozing with metaphor. I have the feeling
now, that my teacher may have thought it oozing with the pus of
pretentiousness. However my predominant feeling, on writing this
masterpiece, was not dissimilar to the feeling I got when I first
tried to ride my bike with no stabilisers. Though wobbling all over
the place, with huge potential to career into the road and the path
of an oncoming truck, I was thinking 'I can DO THIS' 'I AM doing
this. I am a poet!!'
And a year later,
Studying poetry for GSCE English, the work of Ted Hughes and Wilfred
Owen, in particular, blew me away. Ted Hughes in the unpicking. You
had to take it apart to see how it worked. I loved the discussion of
the ideas behind his poetry, I hoarded the gold that mining his
verses gave up. It took my breath away. Two poems in particular. The
Thought Fox, which I used for my GCSE art project, and 'The Warm and
the Cold', which remains my favourite one of his.
And then
Wilfred Owens 'Dulce et Decorum est', For the exact opposite. It did
not need explanation. It needed experiencing. The raw power of it,
the violence and shock of it, the righteous anger behind it, and the
killer punch at the end, "My friends you would not tell with such
high zest, to children desperate for some ardent glory, the Old Lie,
'dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori."
I fell in love with
the very idea of being a poet, from these lessons onwards. To be able
to express yourself with such potency? That was something of
merit.
And a few years later still, when my talented friends
were branching out into Music and Art, poetry became MY thing.
I
started to self define as a poet. And yes, I probably WAS
pretentious, but it connected me to a creative side that hitherto had
been left untapped. I began to carry a pen and a bit of paper with me
everywhere I went. And in that rather teenage unconscious way, I
would frequently stop whatever I was doing and pull out the folded bit
of A4 from my back pocket, and start to scrawl.
And I kept on
scrawling. With varying degrees of success. It is not so much that I
went on a poetry journey, but rather that poetry became my constant
companion on my journey through life. And the A4, and the
occasional back of an envelope, eventually became a note book, which
became a Lap-top, and then a phone. But every now and then, an
envelope still comes in handy.
I began to see in my life that poetry was everywhere,
that, As the poet Pablo Neruda puts it, the 'Heavens unfastened'. That the world was indeed an awesome
place, and by that I mean full of awe, and poetry helps us revel in the
wonder of it.
And, as many poets I suspect will resonate, some of
the most painful moments of life are poems that never reach the
land and evolve, never grow words, font, syntax and verse, but are
reclaimed by the sea of forgetfulness, from which we failed to rescue
them, dragged back into the receding tide of memory. Good ideas for poems, like
the biggest fish, are usually the ones that got away. Let me tell
you. The great Poetry I haven't written. You would be amazed.
And like I said, Poetry
became my companion on the journey, but it became more than that. Through all life, it
became a way understanding, of giving form to a yearning, be it
spiritual, social or sexual. It was the means, in part, by which I
processed my loss and acquisition of faith, and the bereavements of
my Mother first and then my marriage.
It became a way of
marking the miles. It punctuated the otherwise long and monotonous
sentence of my time-line. Poetry became my diary.
And it
allowed me a voice. Often, in private, I would write things I could
never say socially. I could re-imagine conversations, I could add
caveats to ones in which the last word was denied to me. I could
express doubts about all kinds of things. Probe the darkness a
little. Shine the light of verse into the shadowy recess, and see if
there was a monster lurking there.
And those seed thoughts that we
all have at times? I could explore them. Poetry has been a joy and a
gift to me.
And just occasionally, what I love about poems, is
they can reinvent you. People who have heard you read a poem, often
find that you are not quite the person they thought you were. If we
dare risk it, poetry can pin the heart you have kept in your pocket
all these years, back on your sleeve.
And while I am quoting a great poet, why not let us see what some
other of the finest poetic minds have to say on the subject of poetry
and it's purpose.
Soren
Kierkegaard (Danish philosopher, theologian, poet, social critic
and religious author)
and somewhat less
flowery, T. S. Elliot asserts;
T.
S. Eliot
Salman Rushdie has an
even higher view of poetry,
Salman
Rushdie
I think I may have just
about managed to take a few sides here and there, maybe even started
an argument. But Poetry can wake us up. It can shape our world, and
in shaping us, then those around us. And it can challenge. Oh yes.
Robert
Frost
It seems to be the
translation of the soul to paper
Carl
Sandburg (American Poet)
John
Cage (American Composer)
I just threw that one
in for contrast....and humour.
And this is the sense
that I want to get hold of, in my own writing, and for all of us
tonight. Life converts into poetry. Life is poetry. Poetry, if not
life itself, as the singer asserts, is evidence of life, It is not
separate as we sometimes suppose. Cohen makes this vital connection,
but of course, he is speaking AS a poet. We are not ALL poets
though....are we?
John Fowls, a novelist,
who brings a brings a word-smith's sensibility, to his understanding,
and speaks with a poetic heart when he says;
Which brings me back
to a vital question. What IS poetry?
I sometimes feel like a
poem is whatever you want to call it. I recall a discussion, in my
first year music class, on what was 'music', and my teacher told us
of an experimental record, in which, on both sides of an LP, silence
was recorded. We were asked to discuss if THIS was music.
My music teacher
concluded that Music, was whatever it's creator defined it to be. He
argued and noise, or lack of it, if it was used intentionally to
create 'music' was worthy of the name music. He hastily added, of
course, that doesn't make it GOOD music.
The same arguments
exist around art, of course. There so many views of what constitutes
art. But following my Music teachers principle, anything that is
used to create art, can be considered art, because art, like music,
is in the intention.
So if Life is poetry,
and poetry, in some sense, is life, what makes poetry? The writing
and composition of poetry gives expression to something that
pre-exists, because it is the substance of life that inspires us. It
comes from somewhere.
Can John Fowles be
right? Do we all write, unwritten poems, save the poets themselves,
who occasionally commit them to form. What Fowles is saying
is that our lives ARE poems.
This is a high view of poetry,
indeed.
And here is my last quote from
Michael
Franti (An American
rapper,
musician,
poet,
and singer-songwriter.);
He
is quoted as saying “Every
single soul is a poem~”
Although Franti was born in the sixties this idea he is espousing is
just a little older than he is. I am a believer in Jesus and I
regularly read a certain book that is ancient in origin. A book full
of, and bursting with poetry, the intentional expression of the heart
behind creation. St Paul espouses a concept that sits not too
uncomfortably with greek mythology, which states that within each of
us humans, is the 'spark of Zeus'. St Paul in Ephesians 2:10 says
that 'WE are God's workmanship',
The word 'workmanship' in Greek is Poiema. Sound familiar? Poiema, I
am informed, is the route word from which our word Poem, is derived.
Workmanship can also be translated, as Masterpiece. A work of art.
So then we are a divine poem. And, from my perspective, the divine
creator, placed in us, at our core, a longing for creativity.
There is a sense in which we are a creative expression of the divine
heart, a poem, written not on screen or paper, but on 'the tablets of human
hearts'. And through our lives we are shaping that poem.
And
so our written poetry is the intentional expression of our hearts, and
connecting our emotions to thoughts, and our thoughts to words, is
the most human of things to do. To write is to pertain to a sense of
wonder at the world, and sometimes, to express our dissatisfaction with
it....and everything in between. Poems can be written about all life.
About a chewed up bus ticket, or a cheating partner. It can be about
the lifting of depression, or the simple beauty of a raindrop. It can
express frustration with a late train, or it can lament the death of
a loved one. It can rage against the elements, or serenely accept its
fate. Poetry encompasses and enhances life. All life. And it gives a
voice to whomever finds it. Because 'Every single soul is a poem',
then 'every voice is valued'. Poetry is a way for us to register our
arrival and presence on the planet. It says 'I am here'. And that is why I write.
(Written as an essay to be delivered at 'Speak Easy'. A gathering of poets.)
