With my first poetry book being published ‘It’s a Funny Thing, Life’ I thought I would dedicate a blog to my experiences and inspiration in writing poetry.
To be honest I find it easier than writing books, I have been doing it for longer and I have accrued many good reviews which always helps. As anyone who knows me can testify I can be rather playfully stupid, although I’m always busy with running a business and managing all sorts of projects, in amongst this rapid day to day living my poetry inspiration appears.
A poem often starts its life by observation of either my or others’ life experiences. At some point a word hooks my attention and from that other words or ideas come alive seemingly from somewhere deep inside myself.
Those single words or ideas start to flow or bring on other words or ideas and I’m able to be whatever is being created. So with drama, pain, grief, joy or whatever it is, the whole gamut of emotion increases like a building furnace within me.
This is a deep and spiritual happening that I treasure and embrace.
– If the poem is about love – then I feel completely the romance of life.
– If the poem is about death – I hurt and grieve for whomever that poem is about.
– If it’s about adventure – then I am that adventurer, feeling the excitement of escape, the fear of capture and the exaltation of triumph.
I feel it all as though I’m right there living it, and once I’m living the words, the creative juices flow.
Most fortunately, I can actually turn this ability on or off. In other words, if I don’t want to write poetry for a few months because of other commitments, then should I try, nothing comes to me as inspiration is totally gone. Should I come to decide it is time to write poetry again, well then it doesn’t take too long before I get my inspiration and creation back.
Sometimes a new poem flows from start to finish, sometimes it stops mid flow, always to resume later that day or the following day. It can take just an hour or up to weeks or occasionally even months, of small flows and stops until I have a completed poem.
‘It’s a Funny Thing, Life’, collates my poems of love and the many dramas of life. After a long debate I decided to hold the adventure poems back for another book, which I hope you will enjoy reading when released in the next few months.
My wonderful wife Sharon gives me all the inspiration I need for the first half of this book – ‘Love from Many Hearts’. The second half, ‘Strings of Life and Death’ is my musings and personal or objective observations at the wonderful or terrible happenings of life and death. I really hope you enjoy them all.