Poetry pleases

So, it’s July already and how are you all getting on with your writing?

I’ve looked at new ways of stimulating your writing process. One is Poetry (from the Greek word for ‘I create’). 

Favourite modern poets of mine include the former Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy. Born into a poor Irish family in Glasgow she became a writer at an early age. Here is a poem which she wrote when a teacher died and is recorded in Wikipedia:

You sat on your desk,
swinging your legs,
reading a poem by Yeats
to the bored girls,
except my heart stumbled and blushed
as it fell in love with the words and I saw the tree
in the scratched old desk under my hands,
heard the bird in the oak outside scribble itself on the air

I met Carol Ann once when she was living near Wimbledon Common. I like her because she is funny, sad, irreverent and reads her own poems with relish. I used to hear her talk at the Poetry Society in London.

Her Irish heritage also appeals as I have my own family connections there. I’m a big fan of W B Yeats and modern Irish novelists such as Sebastian Barry and Colm Toibin.

And I wondered whether there was poetry in my blood, as a 16th century clergyman called William Kethe (or Keithe) wrote the familiar hymn “All people that on earth do dwell, Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice.”

During the lockdown I have tried writing poetry, as well as reading it, because verse makes you think about your words and about language. But I haven’t managed to sustain my effort, partly because I fear my poetry is pants.

Resources

Anyway writing poetry is just another exercise for the writer. Try it, and, if it doesn’t work for you, stick to reading. If you want to know and understand more about poetry get this accessible book by Oxford Professor John Carey “A little history of Poetry”. 

You can also read lots of poems at www.poetry.org