Autumn 2017 - you have been good to me! I've written a dozen poems in the last month - I'm not entirely sure where I've found the time! But I've been in the 'zone' and I'm milking it for all it's worth because, of course, it won't last.
So I've written 21 poems so far this year, last year was miserable - I only wrote 3. In 2015 I wrote 11 poems, 2014 - 31. And my highest number of poems in a year was in 2013 when I wrote 45.
The last couple years I've been writing much longer poems and sequences which accounts for some of the number disparity.
Anyway this last month has been a sheer pleasure poetry-wise and Transtromer has been my go-to poet everyday. Through Transtromer I've allowed myself to write mostly lyrical nature poems, it's been nice not trying to force a bigger theme onto them. However I feel that I'm ready to go back to my ballad poems soon.
I'm thinking of a book wish-list for Christmas and so far have:
Louise Bourgeois: The Return of the Repressed: Psychoanalytic Writings - quite pricey but sounds amazing and I do so love her work.
Antigonick by Anne Carson - not only is it brilliantly written but it is absolutely gorgeous book illustrated by Bianca Stone (I read a copy of it at Moniack Mhor earlier this year).
Lorca: A Life by Ian Gibson - haven't read a biography for ages and I like a winter escape into another life.
2 comments:
This year’s also been good to me. Fourteen poems so far compared to two last year and nothing the year before. I’d hoped giving up the blog would give me time to be bored enough to write and it seems to be working. There was a time I used to worry about not writing—if you’re not writing how can you have the cheek to call yourself a writer?—but now I’m just grateful when one or two poems turn up. Wouldn’t bother me if I never wrote another line of prose but the poems matter. I’ve been digging through my poetry folders again. I have a shuftie every now and then to see if I can salvage anything. I’ve got poems there that’re ten years old and yet still refuse to please me enough to say they’re finished. There’s one with your name on it and, for the life of me, I’ve no idea what the connection is to you and it has to be you because I don’t know any other Marions. I also can’t decide if it needs any more done to it. Maybe it’ll make more sense to you than it does me:
Beauty
(for Marion)
The toad looked at the sky
and didn't understand.
The toad looked at the trees
and didn't understand.
The toad looked at the pond
and didn't understand.
The toad swallowed a fly
and was satisfied.
:) how funny, I like it! It reminds me of Holub - your poetry has always put me in mind of the anti-poetry style similar to the stripped down poetry of Holub. I'm glad you're finding you're writing more - a good year for both of us!
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