Sunday, October 21, 2012
#WhyIWrite: Poetry and such, I suppose
I am not sure whether this is unanimous, but there are people asking me to publish my poetry. I am not ready to do so, unless I die. My friend Eisen has the directive to publish my poems should I no longer be living. But maybe one day I will publish while alive, in the real sense, not in the, "Imma give you a book of letters," way.There are lots of poems lost out there, given to H mostly. I wrote on all kinds of paper, even on the packaging teabags come in, even on envelopes torn open with my brute fingers after mail sorting. No one is going to find those letters, unless H kept them and is willing to hand them to Eisen post-Elaine-mortem.
Poetry, which I was reminded of by this article, is something I have been neglecting to write. I am so caught up with micro-blogging via Twitter that I have no urgency to journal my feelings and suchlike.
Poetry has its uses for despair. It can carve a shape in which a pain can seem to be; it can give one’s loss a form and dimension so that it might be loss and not simply a hopeless haunting. - Christian Wiman
Even in a physical notebook I don't date my entries and write anything in relation to how I feel for the day and what were the ups and downs of my daily activity. I could never create a spreadsheet of my moods and symptoms for my psychiatrist like some depression patients actually do.
Then I remember something I tweeted with the hashtag #whyIwrite and to paraphrase it I said, because words form themselves into sentences in the air like radiowaves and can only materialise when pen is upon paper.
And if you know me, my poetry is such. I am but an instrument, not in a spooky way, but I find that I am catching words in the air, that is all, that is my poetry.
I was told by the counselor at the psych ward I just spent one week in, to write more. So, with that, I will. As soon as I get this cat off my lap, perhaps.