Exploration

This week I’ve been mostly exploring poetry and looking for inspiration. My tutor says to ‘read something that scares me’ but really, all of it does. My knowledge and experience of poetry is woeful, so it’s quite amusing really that my interest has run off in that direction. Thinking about it though, I do love lyrics, and my favourite musicians tend to be terrible singers but great at writing something ambiguous enough to be interesting as well as meaningful. And by meaningful I don’t mean something deep and worthy necessarily; something true, honest, funny, clever or well written can be just as impressive, engaging, inspiring. In fact, I think my favourite writing of any kind encompasses all of these things.

So, as well as finding some poetry anthologies to pick my way through (I have the excellent Staying Alive anthology trilogy), I’ve also been listening – again, as instructed by my tutor – to Bob Dylan. Have you heard of him? He’s quite good! There’s lots of debate, seemingly, over whether Dylan was a poet or a musician and honestly, I don’t care. I enjoy his storytelling, turns of phrase and the abstraction in his writing. I think that last bit is where I will struggle most when writing, to leave enough for interpretation? Although looks like from interviews Dylan did get annoyed by the “what is this song all about?” question!

So what kind of poetry would you recommend? What will be interesting or a challenge to someone completely new to this? Leave me a comment below!

Also, my offer of sending you some writing is still open, email me if you'd like something. I’ve sent off a bit of poetry so far, it felt good! I am looking forward to seeing what comes back.