A Reluctant Poet

Introduction

To be honest, I am anything but a reluctant poet, but there is a devil in me that constantly tells me that when I decide to write a poem I am being lazy and a total cheapskate.

I am writing this article because the devil is telling me I need to write something that is not poetry.

The reality is that I love writing poetry and often put extra tests in to make it more of a challenge.

The music I have included is "The Poetry of Earth (Geophony)" by Max Richter.

So here is how I still manage to write poetry.

The Driving Forces Behind My Poems

I think at school I was taught that poetry always rhymed and had a set number of beats or syllables per line. Even when I started on Vocal I was still in that mind frame although I knew about blank verse and free verse, but was often and am still often scared to venture out of the defined frameworks.

I have started the Thoughtpieces whiche I suppose could be classed as prose poems, but they are just streams of consciousness to make the reader (and the writer feel much better in themselves) I documented the concept here:

And this was the first story that I did as a Thoughtpiece and I hope to see others take up the concept, I know that you all can.

I constantly think of ways of challenging myself in poetry and the Plagiaristic Poetry concept is one that I laid out here and has enabled me to write a lot of poetry.

You can see many examples here

I think the devil that tells me I am lazy when I write poetry may just be a manifestation of imposter syndrome, but it never stops me, though I generally don't publish poems consecutively. Once I finish this I could follow it up with a poem.

I feel I am one of the best creators of Villanelle's on Vocal, which is continuously emphasised by the feedback I get from my audience and friends and I think I am quite good with the Pantoum. I have written "How To" pieces on both these forms with enclosed videos which you can check out here.

That may seem big-headed of me to some creators, saying I can show you how to do it, but these are examples of me creating poems in real time, just showing you how to do it.

I have written a few pieces on the poetry forms I have attempted, and there are a lot, there are a few listed in this piece:

I still have not got my head around Ekphrastic poetry, although other creators have described some of my poetry as fitting that mould. I will have a look into it and see if I can produce a piece that I know fits that form.

I often combine forms to make challenges more interesting to me, so there may be an Acrostic, but I will make it rhyme and give each line a defined number of syllables. Now does that make me lazy or scared of free verse? I don't think so.

Conclusion

I am lucky enough to have a wonderful Muse who continually inspires me, and without whom I could not write the words I do. She gives me the confidence to put electronic pen to digital paper.

Two hundred or so of my poems have been self-published in my six books on Amazon, so I am not averse to the odd set of lines. I almost feel that I would prefer to write poetry but I feel I would get a little bored if that were my only form of writing despite there being so many forms of poetry.

Some liek Odes, Elegies and Sagas make me unsure, because within themselves they can change so much.

Thank you so much for indulging me as I tell you a little about myself.