Poetry Pals - Week 20 - Finding The Poetry You Need

Or the poetry you are beholden to write. Now just HOW did we get to week 20?

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Hello my wonderful poetry people,

This week over at

Poetry Pals

Nelly had us a thinking. Again. I mean thinking weekly is a little much to ask don’t you think? Just rude! I jest obviously. So without a long preamble this week, here’s the prompt.

pick out a poem that you personally find cathartic. A poem that tends to your needs and heals your soul a little.

When you have your chosen poem, write free-hand for a page or so (or until you run out of steam) about how you experience the poem. WHY does it feel like such a tonic to your soul? What makes it work for you? Afterwards you might also want to make a few notes about how you think the poet has achieved this - if that sort of thing appeals. But form and structure are likely to be secondary here.

Pick out anything from your own writing that stands out. A couple of lines? A statement? Anything you could work with? Could you write your own version in your own words?

Maybe, maybe not.

Alternatively, ignore this first part and just write the poem that you need to read or write currently. It could be as beautifully simple as the one by Kobayashi Issa above. Take what you need.

I had to have a think about this one for a while, put it on the back burner so to speak as I had other words clamouring for their existence in my head. So once I got them sorted I had a good think. I don’t think I’ve ever had one poem that I’ve gone back to time and again. I claim John Donne’s ‘The Flea’ and e.e. cummings ‘may i touch he said’ as my favourites when asked (but to be honest it changes all the time and this is learnt and scripted response). I came across Cummings when I was at 6th form and until then I’d never come across poets who broke the rules. I’d studied the war poets, the Metaphysical poets, and obviously Shakespeare and then along came someone who not only ignored punctuation and form but wrote about sex in a straightforward way. None of this difficult allegory about blood mixing in fleas. It was amazing! I was hooked. Suddenly poetry was infinitely more accessible.

I loved his shape and form, the way the poems were set out, the way they broke rules. I wrote them out in the the back of my diary, reading them again and again. And I think was rather influenced by him.

It was a book that helped me the most, that gave me a perspective on life that I lived by, so much so that I bought a copy of for each of my children, that book (novella) was Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. I wrote a poem a long time ago that encapsulated the feeling of the story I felt. I come back to this book over and over.

I’ve not tended to use poetry in the way Nelly describes, because books tended to do that for me instead. Two poems for you though. One inspired by old Jonathan the seagull, and the one that forced me to write it on Sunday last week, seen here- I’m in the middle of revising, but this is how it fell out of my head. I personally love it. Maybe it’s too long. But this was the poem I NEEDED to write.

Photo by Alex Wigan on Unsplash

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Yesterday

Yesterday, I saw a daring
Seagull flying high.
And keenly felt the sharp wind
Rustle its shimmering feathers.
It dived,
And plummeting,
Scattered others below it.
Frenzied, the flock turned
And the new outcast 
Struck happily for
Further shores, then
I sensed its freedom and its joy.

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Tell me what you think. I’d love to know and get some feedback.

Till next time, peeps.

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