Amazon

I was proper naughty yesterday.  I went on to Amazon to order Rob Mackenzie's collection and, surprise, surprise, I didn't feel entirely satisfied until some hours later, after buying lots of other sparkly things.

As well as a good sized hoard of DVDs, I also ordered several more books: Alice Oswald's A Sleepwalk on the Severn  (I really enjoyed Woods etc., so wanted to try some more of hers) and a couple of books by Margaret Atwood - Eating Fire, which is a selection of her work from 1965 to 95, and her latest collection, The Door.

I, like many other people, I suspect, knew Atwood as a novel writer before realising she wrote poetry - she does it pretty well too...  I particularly love her poem, 'You Begin', which I first came across in the Norton Anthology.  I read it as a parent / grandparent speaking to an infant, although I guess that if you looked at it a more spiritual way, it could be a god-like life creator speaking to a human of any age.  Although I aren't a very spiritual person, I kind of like the second reading better...

You Begin

You begin this way:

this is your hand,

this is your eye,

that is a fish, blue and flat

on the paper, almost

the shape of an eye.

This is your mouth, this is an O

or a moon, whichever

you like. This is yellow.

Outside the window

is the rain, green

because it is summer, and beyond that

the trees and then the world,

which is round and has only

the colors of these nine crayons.

This is the world, which is fuller

and more difficult to learn than I have said.

You are right to smudge it that way

with the red and then

the orange: the world burns.

Once you have learned these words

you will learn that there are more

words than you can ever learn.

The word hand floats above your hand

like a small cloud over a lake.

The word hand anchors

your hand to this table,

your hand is a warm stone

I hold between two words.

This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,

which is round but not flat and has more colors

than we can see.

It begins, it has an end,

this is what you will

come back to, this is your hand.

by Margaret Atwood

Snowglobes

Who hasn’t owned one at some point in their life?  They’re fun, and frequently cheap and tacky, but have you ever thought of them as art?

Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz have certainly had that thought and have produced a collection of suitably insane tableaux to sit inside them.  This one is Traveler 63 at Night from 2003 and is one of my favourites – I’m wondering if it might inspire me to write something chilling for Halloween.

I do love a bit of quirky art.

Ambivalence

So, I got started on the William Butler Yeats lectures today. As my Mother’s countrymen would say – Jaysus! I’m only 2/3rds through the lectures yet but, so far, I’m not a fan of Mr Yeats – which is always a hard thing to say about such a big shot in the canon. Hopefully, I will come to appreciate him but looking at his early to middle poetry, my impression is he needs to “try and have his writing make sense".  Don't get me wrong, I am sure it makes perfect sense if one makes the effort to analyse it but, to be frank, it is so over flowery that I slip into a coma before I get that far.

And now, from Yeats to me (a very small step, I’m sure you’ll agree – see I rhymed there, I really am a poet). Here’s the piece I started working on yesterday, I’m not sure what I think of this yet either:

Filial visit to Ward 1

What was that she said
when she spoke of sleep;
was it “good”, or “not good”?
I moil to tune my ear,
today I intend to please.

I say I’m glad (got it right),
she sighs and talks of pain,
of sitting straight and needing
recipes for soup.
So, she’s feeling kind.

My choice is to collaborate,
to speak enthusiastically
of roasted vegetables,
the taste of butternut squash.

Submerged

I really didn’t think I’d want to so soon, but having submerged myself in poetry somewhat over the last few days, I have written a little myself today.  Not sure yet what I think of it, will leave it to simmer a while.  Meanwhile I took out some old pieces to read and found it all a little disappointing.  The upside of this is that feeling that way didn’t come as a surprise – I think it is a perfectly normal reaction for most writers – especially those who are still learning their craft.

I’ve also been reading some of the books I’ve bought but not found time to read yet – Anon Five and Hugo Williams’ West End.  From the first, Anon Five, I really enjoyed Humdinger by John Whitworth – it actually made me squeal with delight!  Also Clumsy by Cat Dickson – a poet who seems to have done quite a lot but doesn’t have a presence I can find on the web.  As for the Hugo Williams book, I’m enjoying it, but am struggling a little as it is the first of his I’ve read, but the tenth collection he’s published.  I think I will get his Collected Poems and read that before re-visiting West End.

Also on the menu yesterday and today was attending some Yale Modern Poetry lectures online, which were really enjoyable.  So far, I’ve completed the Introduction and the Robert Frost sections of the course.  Although I’ve read most of the poets covered here to some extent, I haven’t studied them (or this period of literature) before, so plan to work my way through all the lectures.

Quiescent?

As well as returning to my blog, I also decided to go dip my toe back into reading and critiquing at the PFFA, but boy it’s quiet!

Admittedly, I’ve only been visiting there again for half a week, but I’ve been shocked at how few postings there have been. I’m sure that when I was last there, there would be half a board’s worth of new postings (mostly awful, of course) on General every day – over the last three days, there have only been one or two a day.

Maybe this is just a quiet week. Or maybe PFFA has taken all the available fresh meat with tortured souls and cut skins, melded them into poets, and now the pool of potential is empty? [sharp intake of breath] surely not?

Well, I don’t think they’re quite there yet, a plagiarist was squished and sent Outside in the last week and the newest newbie is called ‘fallenangel’, which is promising….

Dining

Okay, so I’m a little bit drunk.

It is him indoors’ birthday today and we’ve been to our local high quality eatery for a slap up and several vats of wine. Relatively speaking (as compared to the hours kept in my youthful years) we’re home early at 10:45 (why does the published time of this post think it is an hour earlier than it is? I'm too squiffy to work it out...), but we’ve spent grandly and are feeling quite jolly.

Isn’t it funny how one is easily satisfied with so much less excitement as one ages? In my teen years, I wouldn't have thought I'd had a good night out with anything less than pre-drinks in the venue of choice (Babycham in the local park - I've always been a classy bird), a glittering disco extravaganza  (for which, read tunes spun by the local loser DJ, Miss Selfridge body glitter worn across a boob tube bound décolletage at the Saturday night village hall 'do'), a grand and highly dramatic evening of flirting, 'necking' and slow dancing with the cutest guy at the disco, all finished off with a huge fight with Mum and Dad on returning home decorated with love bites and smeared kohl eyes.

Aaahhh, those were the days...

Capote

I've been aware of Truman Capote as a 'famous' person for a long time, and have seen the movie, 'Capote' that documented him writing the nonfiction novel In Cold Blood but until recently, I had never read anything of his.

As I always enjoy reading about murder and the like (I've stopped questioning why and just accept this fact about myself by now), it seemed sensible to start with In Cold Blood, so that's what I've done. I'm about half way through at the moment and just love his writing style – his voice is languorous, cultured, slightly drawling, which in itself I find highly enjoyable – but what is truly striking is his ability to set a scene and unfold his story with such a cool hand whilst, at the same time, being able to build such desire in the reader to turn the page.

The other striking thing about Capote’s approach to the story is how he chose to present the killers. He tells their background story in the same matter of fact way he tells that of their victims (the Clutter family) and, so far, I don’t particularly detect sympathy for either group of characters. It will be interesting to see if this develops later in the book.

Almost equally intriguing is why Capote chose to write this book in the first place – and dedicate so much time to it (4 years of research, apparently). This story was one of several he was considering ‘using’ to exercise this new genre he had created of nonfiction. Perhaps his almost detached cool style of writing gives us a clue that he wasn’t so much interested in the story itself, or the people involved, but perhaps more in his own literary experiment? He was a writer who lived in the spotlight too, so I can just imagine how he must have enjoyed the prospect of unveiling the double shock factor of multiple murder committed in apple pie heaven and his innovative presentation of it.

I’ll reserve final opinion until I’ve finished reading but, for now, my impressions are that Capote was a very media savvy guy with a big appetite for limelight – but boy, he could write.

Hermit

Hmmm, I meant to have a little hiatus, I think I may have overdone it... 3 years and 4 months - oops.

In all that time, apart from day to day functional stuff, I haven't written a thing, and haven't read much either. Writing wise, I've been totally stagnant. How liberating! Well, no, not really - I haven't had the energy for writing - have been going through a thinking and learning period and have been totally immersed in my day job. It has all been very worthwhile - I am wiser as well as older - what more can one ask?

I really had almost decided never to come back to this blog - I felt that I had moved on too far - but having commented on Kirk's Reading Henry James blog yesterday, and being on leave from work at the moment so having some time to spend on myself, I decided to wander back through the open door. I actually went to visit Barbara Smith's blog first and got a great surprise to see how things have moved on for her and what great success she's having - go Babs!

So I will have a little about think why my Garbo moment 3 years and 4 months ago became so much more. I suspect I had simply bored myself and needed to go away and top up with some new experience to freshen my material - or maybe I am just a natural hermit...

Garbo

Ever felt like you just wanted to be left alone? For once, I'm using one of my own pictures on the blog - this is one of my cats - Elijah. Now he's fully grown, he can't squeeze himself into the bookshelves but, he still has plenty of Garbo moments.

As evidenced by a distinct lack of entries here over the last few weeks, I am seriously struggling with my writing at the moment. The causes are simple enough – lack of time, lack of energy, lack of inspiration (yes, I do believe that is necessary) and the presence of a nasty cold virus.

Anyway, in an effort to share something with the world, I thought I’d share my favourite banana loaf recipe – Walnut, Date and Honey Cake:

Put all this stuff in a bowl:

8oz self-raising flour
1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
6oz softened butter
4oz light muscovado sugar
2 tablespoons of honey
2 beaten eggs
2 medium ripe bananas (about 9oz in their skins) – mashed
4 oz stoned and chopped dates

Mix it all up together, beat for 2 minutes, and stick it in a greased and lined 2lb loaf tin. Level the top, scatter over 50g of chopped walnuts, and bake for 1 hour at 160C/Gas 3. The top will feel firm when done. Let it rest in the tin for 10 mins before turning out to cool and, when cool, drizzle the top with more honey.

Fabulous eaten warm too, but very good the next day – the bananas keep the cake really moist.

Arrogance

I want to begin by thanking Eloise for starting me off on this thought yesterday when I read her blog entry, I just don’t know what to do with myself, and the attached comments. I continued to crunch away at the subject whilst having my weekly creative time with the hoover, and got that lovely warm feeling when things started to click into place.

The subject is really that of self-belief. This is a subject that has often blipped my radar and is mostly responsible for the title of this blog, along with my love of ancient history. Why do I often feel misunderstood (which sounds rather self-involved for a woman in her forties) and why do people so often think I am arrogant or pretentious? Why do I care? Hmm; the last question is probably the easiest to answer – I hate being misunderstood because I’m a communicator and it makes me feel like a failure.

I think I found the answer to this a little while ago when I worked out that most people judge according to their own standards and behaviour – thinking I’m arrogant, pretentious, or anything else negative, says more about them than it does about me. But when does self-belief become arrogance, or does it?

One of my clearest memories from childhood was the horror of having to use the telephone to call someone I didn’t know. I was incredibly shy, although anybody who has known me during my adult life would have a very hard time believing it. I used to work out exactly what I needed to achieve with the call, how I would do it and what all the possible permutations of the exchange would be (what if the person is rude, or I get a wrong number) – it was very important to have counter measures and contingencies fully planned out ahead, I couldn’t rely on my ability to react naturally. Writing that seems so odd – I honestly don’t recognise myself – my ability to think on my feet has served me enormously well.

So, if I was such an unsure child, where did my high level of self-belief come from? To add to the big negative of being naturally shy, I also have a mother who never tired of telling me I couldn’t do things. I don’t mean she wouldn’t allow me, I mean she would tell me that I would fail – she never gave me a reason why, she just gave it as an intractable fact. She wasn’t being evil or nasty – she truly believed it herself, because of her own life experiences. I simply never listened to her. I knew she was wrong, that I could do anything if I set my mind to it. And now I’m wondering if it was perhaps one single event that sparked that in me. Did I make such a good job of one of those horrible phone calls, or tell a really convincing lie (the one I remember best from childhood was that my dad was Elvis), or make up a story or a poem (the only ones I wrote as a child were funny and end-rhymed) that everyone I read it to loved? I honestly don’t recall – I just know that fairly early on in life, I knew I could do anything if I tried. Now that’s not arrogance – that’s self-belief.

Dictionary.com defines arrogance as: “overbearing pride evidenced by a superior manner toward inferiors” and that is something I have no memory of ever doing.

Jumpin'

The Red Hot Chili Pepper’s new album is out – my copy is en route from Amazon – so what a great excuse to revisit their other albums.

I was horribly disappointed with By The Way – there are probably only three tracks on there that I really liked, and I think the disappointment was doubled by having enjoyed Californication so much before it. Apparently, Flea has made the comment somewhere that if you don’t like Stadium Arcadium, you don’t like the RHCPs – I take that as a very positive indication for content!

I’ve also been reading Anthony Kiedis’ autobiography, Scar Tissue and quite enjoying it – following a shaky start. At first, I thought he was making a lot of the stuff up (like having Cher as a baby sitter) but, he’s probably not – some people’s lives really are that insane.

So having got the albums off the CD shelves, I couldn’t resist burning a compilation CD with my favourite RHCP tracks, interspersed with the likes of Nirvana and Queens of the Stone Age. Driving to work yesterday, the wing mirrors were jumping – brilliant.

Alone?

Having completed the first proper draft of the third (though not chronologically speaking) in my series of serial killer poems, I am facing the questions I usually face – does it stand alone, does it need to? As usual, I don’t feel that I am any closer to answers that satisfy me.

I’ve looked at other series and sequences and it seems to me that whilst it is perfectly possible to make single poems in a thematic sequence stand alone quite satisfactorily, it isn’t entirely possible to do that with a character based sequence – without the other poems in the series, the reader will never see the full character / story. But, what I really can’t work out is what each of the poems needs, to enable it to stand alone.

To me, each of the three poems so far stand entirely alone and, apart from tinkering (which could still be substantial), they all feel complete as far as content is concerned. My problem is that, to some of their readers so far, at least two of them don’t feel like complete pictures in themselves – they rely on the others in the series.

Even if I do decide that one or two of them don’t stand alone, does it really matter? I’ve read some discussions about series and sequences and about what is ‘correct’ but, isn’t it more important for me to ask myself what is important to me and to these poems?

Still thinkin’. By the way, the picture is of a Remington ‘Bullet Knife’ that appeared in the latest poem. This one is an R293 jack knife, known as a ‘Hunter / Trader / Trapper’. Don’t you just love authentic detail?

Chilled

Apart from the one day when I had to go into work to deal with everyone’s annual pay review, this week has been really good. I badly needed a rest and some time to myself as work has had me fairly frazzled for the past 18 months (and only the last 4 months have been busy in a good way). I have been feeling guilty that I haven’t used my time off work to get other stuff done (like proper housework rather than the weekly scoot round with the vacuum) but, for once, I’ve managed to ignore it and relax properly, just doing what I feel like doing.

I’ve spent quite a lot of time at the latter end of the week at PFFA critiquing, and have really enjoyed it – I had got badly out of practice. Strangely, I haven’t had a real urge to write myself – I usually have lots of ideas when I’m properly relaxed. However, I’m not concerned – I’m beginning to understand that moods to write, read and critique come and go, and it’s more fruitful to go with them than to fight them. How very Zen of me.

Ragù

Well, rather than making my usual pretend Ragù Bolognese for lasagne today, I decided to try and make a proper one. Of course, I didn’t venture into classic Italian cookery books (I only wish I could be that authentic) but checked up with good old, reliable Delia and found her recipe.

Even if I say so myself, my pretend Ragù Bolognese is usually quite tasty – I tend to use peppers as well as lots of garlic and onions, along with bacon, a good concentrated beef stock, passata, tomato puree, red wine and fresh herbs – but I just use steak mince – no mixture of pork and beef and chicken livers, and certainly no nutmeg. However, having made Delia’s today, I will never make it any other way – it is amazingly gorgeous and actually didn’t take that long to make – about 45 minutes all told.

Obviously, I couldn’t bear to follow the recipe exactly, but I only made minimal adjustments – swapped the tinned tomatoes for a large jar of passata, used far less olive oil than Delia gives, only a squeeze of tomato puree and added a tub of sun-dried tomatoes that I chopped up finely.

I’ve just used half of it to make a lasagne and put the other half in a tub for the freezer. If only I could stop eating it out of the tub with a spoon…

Butterfly

I really can’t decide what I want to write about today. I finished work for a little holiday on Wednesday and I haven’t done a stroke since – lovely. The only issue with that is that the lack of work-based mental acrobatics means that I’ve gone into overdrive-any-subject-under-the-sun-based mental acrobatics, and now I can’t pick just one thing to concentrate on.

I do have an idea for a new poem lounging around in my head somewhere – something to do with a character who collects pebbles in the pockets of a gabardine coat but, at the moment, I’m not sure if it’s a he or a she, why they’re collecting the pebbles, or if the pebbles should be polished or not. I’m also heavily into revisiting the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ work as their new album is about to come out, and I’m trying to read Pushkin’s Onegin at the same time as Anthony Kiedis’ autobiography, the course books from A103 that Barbara sent me to see if I thought I might like to tutor it, and Juvenal’s satires.

Where to settle? Easy answer – don’t. That’s the option I’ve gone for so far. I reckon that when I’m ready to settle on something, I will.

Meanwhile, I’m thoroughly enjoying reading my selected NaPoWriMo threads on PFFA and trying to resist the temptation to branch out to others that I very much want to read, but really can’t afford to give the proper time to. They’ll still be there in May.

For now, I’ll continue butterflying around and enjoying my mini-break over Easter. Oh yeah, and I accepted my honours degree today – have plumped for BA (Hons) Humanities with Classical Studies at a 2:1 classification. Job done – lovely.

Stelmach

I’m currently working my way through an anthology of ghost poems Chance of a Ghost, to write a review for Gerald England and, whilst it is taking much longer than I’d like due to a continued shortage of reading time, it’s already paid off with a new discovery – Marjorie Stelmach.

So far, I haven’t found out much about her, except that she's Canadian, has one published collection and various poems published in various journals. I'm continuing to dig. Meanwhile, here’s her poem from the anthology (I think the second strophe is outstanding):

DOORWAYS

IN OTHER PEOPLE’S DREAMS

I appear in doorways. I always know
something they should know.
I call them in to hear the tidings, or out
to watch the world do whatever it’s doing.
Sometimes I’ve come to warn them – No.
Don’t look: the shuttle’s crashed;
the beautiful child’s stillborn; wait,
the stairway’s gone.
Then I vanish or my words wake them.
Either way, my part is over.

It’s a gift of sorts, a calling: I appear
and disappear my body like a wink
or a moon,
thin into rooms and out,
as if my cells could take the shapes
of ornamental spaces in a lacework of worlds.

Meanwhile, in my own dreams I move slow motion.
Dreamfields unfold like lifetimes before me;
buffeted by landscapes, I can’t seem to fly.
I watch my doorways fill
with clear gaps where no one stands,
and never will again. I listen.
No word comes.

After years of being told at breakfast or in letters
of my appearances,
I’ve begun to feel an awkwardness in living.
Our comings and goings, the expansions
and contradictions of the air between us,
these cumbersome tissues we call our lives,
how could these be real?

And dreams?
Words spoken in dreams stay
Or they don’t. Screams
doppler off into breakfasts,
words of comfort sink into the sweetened milk.
If, in broad day we suddenly turn
and look over our shoulders at doorways,
it’s nothing. We know we’re alone;
but sometimes
we think we may not be.

Ambition

I had my first ‘one to one’ meeting with my new (new since the end of last year, that is) boss this week and when he asked me what my goals were for 5-10 years time, I realised, with a considerable shock, that I didn’t really have any.

Although I’ve always been a bit woolly about direction, I can’t recall a time when I felt like I didn’t have any at all. Perhaps I’m still spaced from finishing the degree, since that has been my major goal for the last six years?

Anyway, it was a good thing he asked me, and a good thing that I was freaked, because, of course, I immediately got thinking and planning.

The first possibility to consider was more study. Hmm, no. Now I’ve learned how to study independently, I don’t need the structure that doing the degree gave me. However, I’m the type that constantly needs new ideas to thresh, so I’d like to stay involved with the OU and its community. Maybe I’ll take a few short courses, but that’s just filler – what I’m looking for is meat. So, maybe I’ll teach instead – I know that I have a real passion for the Humanities and for helping people learn so, okay – maybe I’ll try that. Barbara has already sent me her old books for A103 (Introduction to the Humanities – a course I never did), so I’ve got somewhere solid to start, before I apply. I certainly can’t afford to do it this year – paid work is making way too many demands on my time and energy.

So that’s it – getting a part-time job tutoring A103 online is my new ambition. Hmm, not entirely though – that isn’t much of an ambition, is it? I’ve also got writing (don’t see that as a goal – it’s an unquestioned part of life) and the fulfilment I’ve been getting from my paid job of late, but that’s not real meat, more of an incidental side-effect. And then it came to me – what I truly want is to be able to give up work in 10 years time – that is my ambition. Wow – now that’s a piece of fillet.

Ammons

Well, I’ve been working my way through my A.R. Ammons book (The Selected Poems) and what a surprise – I find that I enjoy his poems more when I read silently. I usually read all poems out loud, since the sensuality of sounds is a major component of poetry enjoyment for me, but Ammons is very different – very cerebral. It is almost as if he is whispering secrets to you through the poems and you can only hear them if you’re very quiet. I know that is a very fanciful way of describing it, but it as close as I can get to explain how I feel.

I think this is a collection that I’ll come back to again and again. Even though he is making me work a bit, whenever I do work, I’m always rewarded.

Here are several poems that I really enjoyed straight off when I picked up the book again today, to read a few more:

Still

I said I will find what is lowly
and put the roots of my identity
down there:
each day I'll wake up
and find the lowly nearby,
a handy focus and reminder,
a ready measure of my significance,
the voice by which I would be heard,
the wills, the kinds of selfishness
I could
freely adopt as my own:

but though I have looked everywhere,
I can find nothing
to give myself to:
everything is

magnificent with existence, is in
surfeit of glory:
nothing is diminished,
nothing has been diminished for me:

I said what is more lowly than the grass:
ah, underneath,
a ground-crust of dry-burnt moss:
I looked at it closely
and said this can be my habitat: but
nestling in I
found
below the brown exterior
green mechanisms beyond the intellect
awaiting resurrection in rain: so I got up

and ran saying there is nothing lowly in the universe:
I found a beggar:
he had stumps for legs: nobody was paying
him any attention: everybody went on by:
I nestled in and found his life:
there, love shook his body like a devastation:
I said
though I have looked everywhere
I can find nothing lowly
in the universe:

I whirled though transfigurations up and down,
transfigurations of size and shape and place:
at one sudden point came still,
stood in wonder:
moss, beggar, weed, tick, pine, self, magnificent
with being!



I love the beggar in this piece, and the line breaks and use of colons haunt me as I try to discover their sense but then decide it really doesn't matter! There’s a really interesting piece about him and how he wrote in the Guardian, here.



Winter Scene

There is now not a single
leaf on the cherry tree:

except when the jay
plummets in, lights, and,

in pure clarity, squalls:
then every branch

quivers and
breaks out in blue leaves.



The image of the naked tree quivering to the “squall” of the jay seems both playful and delightful.


Loss

When the sun
falls behind the sumac
thicket the
wild
yellow daisies
in diffuse evening shade
lose their
rigorous attention
and
half-wild with loss
turn
any way the wind does
and lift their
petals up
to float
off their stems
and go



Although the very short lines turned me right off this one at first, the idea of the daisies being “half-wild” due to the loss of the sun, kind of took my breath away – such a simple yet dramatic image.

So, if you don’t know much about Ammons, I recommend you take a look – I’m finding him pretty fascinating. This web site is a decent place to start.

Series

It’s some weeks since I mentioned that I’d been kicking around an idea for another poem in my ‘serial’ series but, finally, I’ve put fingers to keyboard and come up with a first draft.

Writing a series is weird. On the one hand, you have the ease of writing within a pre-decided set of parameters (in this case, I know who my narrator will be and what he will do, or will have done, or is about to do!) but, on the other, until you’ve completed the series, you don’t truly know who the hell your narrator is. Well, that has been my experience with this series, at any rate. My frustration as the writer is that I know a little more about him every time I write a piece and therefore, I might not do him justice in any piece, until all the pieces are written. But context is probably the biggest issue for editing and revision because most of my readers and commenters are aware of the whole series, so each piece is seldom read independently. See – weird.

Before Yvette. Breakfast in bed

Deleted for revision

Tortured

I am a tortured poet. But not in a good way.

I’m tortured because I can't stop worrying about whether I might not be tortured enough to match up to some folks’ ideas of what a poet should be. I don’t suffer from depression, angst, soul searching, navel gazing, or any of those kind of emotional gewgaws that seem to be so precious to the ‘true’ poet.

Okay, I'm not really worried about it, but does having a cheerful disposition make me an impostor poet? Should I weep rather than laugh and flow rather than craft? See that? It rhymes – I must be a poet!

This is an aspect of poetry that occasionally bothers me – why do so many people feel that ‘true’ poetry is a matter of heart and soul rather than head and intellect? Is a poem that touches on some insightful philosophical question worth any less than one that touches one’s heart? Neither are easy to write, nor so common. But I would much rather read a thoughtful piece that failed to reach insightful, than an emotionally soaked piece that failed to touch any part of my left ventricle.