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, somehow in among 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 stemming from somewhere deep inside myself.
Those single words start to flow and bring further ideas and I’m able to be whatever is being created. So with drama, pain, grief, joy or whatever it is, the whole 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.
– When 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 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 decide it’s time to write poetry again, it doesn’t take long before I get my inspiration back.
Sometimes a new poem flows from start to finish. Yet other times it stops mid flow, always to resume later that day or the following day. It can take from an hour or up to a few weeks. Occasionally it takes 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. Note these adventure poems were released as Moon Dreams.
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.
