This post is not about bragging.
But to those who will read it, no doubt you will have your suspicions that it is a sort of act of boasting.
However, it should be said.
No poem on this blog has ever been revised or made into second drafts etc. and no poem in this blog was pained over for hours on end.
There, said it.
Most of my poems are done in less than twenty five minutes, first draft, scheduled or published online immediately without a second thought and I can only recite one poem I have ever written.
Food for thought, isn’t it?
It’s one of those reasons why I am not a member of any poetic clubs; I am not welcomed because I can push out three to five poems an hour without aching over the words I should produce.
It just naturally flows.
I was astounded to find some poets online take weeks to finish a piece, I personally couldn’t do that and I think it goes to show who is more dedicated to their craft. They are – I wouldn’t faff around like that over one poem.
I live for the current emotion, it is the current emotions that drive the poetry I don’t want to hang on most of those emotions for weeks on end, good Lord I really would commit suicide if that was the case and at the moment I am only tiptoeing at the edge of it.
It took me about an hour and a half to write one poem once, the longest ever.
I do delete poems never to share them, this happens about twice a week, so you’re losing around a hundred to a hundred and fifty per year, because I am embarrassed to share the depths of my emotions at times.
Sometimes I preschedule poems for months in advance whilst I think about deleting them – at the moment there are seven whose future is as obscure as mine.
Nobody believes I can write that fast until they see me in action, offline.
Then they accuse me of boasting.
But they did challenge me!
I will sit there and ask them, pick a subject and I will think about it for two or three minutes, to get my mind into the zone of that subject and how I feel about it and then the words pour out and the poem is done within minutes.
I can write a poem about anything, so long as it doesn’t feel like a lie to my heart. For example, I couldn’t write a poem which is supposed to be a love song for Hitler – I hate fascists!
So that’s not a poem I could write.
But I could write one about cutting his balls off and feeding them to him, no matter how disgraceful that would be and inelegant.
That’s not an invitation for requests by the way!
I find it hard to write more than three poems a day, though I have been known to do up to ten.
I try to force myself to do at least one per day, if I live to a hundred imagine a future publication of all my poetic works, how many volumes could that possibly be?
Thing is, I haven’t a clue what I am doing poetically.
I have never been formally educated about it, I can’t tell a poem from a rhyme to a sonnet etc. – for all I know they could be the same thing but fancy names!
I do know what a haiku is though and I used to write them.
In fact talking of sonnets, I have been seriously thinking about reading a book to learn about those.
One of my dreams is to be patient enough with my poetry that I could actually write a poem as long as Shakespeare, Christina Rossetti and Edmund Spenser.
I have often thought about creating a large poem which is a story like Edmund Spenser’s Fairy Queen – that would be amazing if I could do something like that.
That would take me months, could I do it on an emotional level?
I have often thought about challenging myself to do it!
I originally wrote the first chapter of a fantasy story in rhyme, with that very intention; but I couldn’t hold it throughout the story – it’s still in progress after nine years, but I haven’t added a thing to the project since 2015.
It’s about gargoyles protecting the heart of a young maiden who lives in the house they protect.
It’s a dark fantasy and very macabre, it’s sort of like Edgar Allen Poe meets Hans Christian Andersen.
I have a couple of online friends who have made the suggestion that I should go on stage and read my poems out there, but I won’t do that.
Why?
Because hilariously as it sounds, I don’t actually regard myself a poet yet!
Yet this is probably what I am best known for.
At the moment I am having a very poetic night – I am thinking about poetry a lot and I am frustrated that a book I have ordered from EBay is two weeks late in the post and I had to put in a complaint about it.
I want to finish the book and do the essays in it to learn what I am doing. Unfortunately the library is fed up with me re-borrowing that book, I’ve had it a total nine weeks this last borrowing session and it’s the second time in a year I did that, having it for about eighteen weeks in total for the whole year!
I wish it would come soon!
It’s where some of my poems I’ve posted on here has been inspired by, such as “Grief”, “Brent Cross Shopping Centre” and “Lessons from life”.
Anyway, if that’s bragging I apologise!
Thanks for reading…
tardycreative.com 