On Poetry Writing

In a sense I never learnt to write poetry. We did the usual things at school, and I was good at Eng Lit, but I couldn't really get a handle on rhymed verse, and metres and feet. So, for years, it passed me by. Doggerel was another matter. I could do that, which proved very handy in parish ministry in replying in kind to various 'oddes' (sic) composed by certain parishioners.

Twelve years in to ordained life I suffered a severe nervous breakdown which proved to be the precursor to retirement on health grounds, starting effectively twenty five years ago. Some months in, while I could not sleep one night a line that I knew I needed to write down would not leave my mind. So I got up and wrote it down, followed by dozens more till a prose poem emerged.

And so it started, my vocation to write, first as catharsis and therapy, now as ministry to many others but always, I think, a word to me first of all.

I had the privilege subsequently of sitting under the feet for ten years of a most accomplished poet and theologian who took me under her wing (if you can be in both places at the same time, that is). She corrected my many facile mistakes and ineptness, but never attempted to force me into a 'classical' form of style of poetry, rather to discover my own.

And what is my own? Oddly, I'm not sure! I do know that I have my own particular 'voice' and preferences in the way that I write. However, for me the way a poem is written depends upon its subject matter, which may not emerge till after I've begun to write. Often a phrase or an image occurs to me that I know I must write about  - now! So off I go and out it comes. I do some editing, of course, but usually finish very swiftly and follow the urge to share it immediately, which email makes possible. A poem is not complete until it is read, preferably heard.

The word poetry comes from the root 'to make'. It's part of the creative purpose that God has sub-contracted to us humans, so we do well to be delighted when we make a poem. That's not to say, naturally, that it shouldn't be critiqued, corrected, rejected as bad, if it is. Better to know than to be self-deceived! But if a poem can 'say more in less' to someone, even just one person, then it's done a job.

The poem (I call them pomes so as not to get ideas above my station) that follows, written after midnight today) is a good example of my writing.

6^th September 2012

Waning, then Waxing

The Moon retreats towards the blankness of its regulated rhythm.

Life here, on Earth, would be unimaginable

without her silent obedience

to her barren, lifeless calling to hang there

in the sky,

keeping us in balance.

God be praised who designs the chance,

knock-on effect of the collections of rock,

who spins such an intricate web of planetary interaction.

Mind in man, no accident,

rises through space and time

and is given the ability to choose,

should it so choose,

to commit to the astronomical risk of faith

in the one who became so frail

in order that it may make its way

to all that is impossible yet to grasp.