There's rarely one single thing a person is trying to do with poetry. Each poem is an opportunity for you to do something new. Language/the poem is just the tool - take it with you on all kinds of excursions!

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Fuselit - pocket poetry and art, made with love and diligence!

Roundtable Review - reviews, articles and new writing in poetry, fiction, film, art and stage.

Just read through some of your latest. If you're looking for what to do next/stuck for ideas, my suggestion would be to try your hand at a more mainstream approach. You've got the abstract ideas and ambiguous endings/imagery to chime well - now I'd say, break out out of that zone and try to write more conventional poems, even if it feels like it will be a total disaster, to see where it takes you!

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Fuselit - pocket poetry and art, made with love and diligence!

Roundtable Review - reviews, articles and new writing in poetry, fiction, film, art and stage.

By 'conventional' do you mean more concrete? A clear narrative?

Your earlier comment got me thinking. You say that language/poem is a tool - but for me, that's some way from how I think of poetry.

Language is a set of tools for sure, and it seems with poetry what we're doing in the main is using them outside of their intended purpose - like playing music with a screwdriver and hammer. (and of course we can make our tunes in such a way that it seems we're using the tools normally - screwdriver in a twisty motion, beating with the hammer and so on) But I'm not using it as a tool in poetry (and don't say 'but as a tool for making music' because that's not what I mean by a tool here)

Which made me think further - this all boils down to that communication issue we spoke about before. And it occurred to me that part of the reason I am able to write poetry (whereas I find prose and philosophy both quite difficult now) is precisely because I don't believe its a form of communication. If I did it would be a real problem because I don't believe I have much worth communicating! (and let's not dig into that one, that's for a future counselling session after I've run my life into the ground )

But then, if I'm not 'communicating' what am I doing with my poetry? I think in the long run I need an answer to this to keep on going. It can be a range of things indeed, but the reason I was troubled is because when I started writing poetry again after Uni I had a really clear idea of what it was I was doing and I seem to less have lost this than have lost the ability to write according to this. Which in the long run might not be a bad thing.

So I will write some conventional poems!

And go to bed because NaPo, printing problems, present shopping and Wittgenstein have clearly collectively fried my noggin!

I didn't want to say 'concrete' because you do use a lot of concrete imagery, but sort of narratives, yeah, or poetry that's definitely 'about' something.

Using language to create poetry isn't really like using a screwdriver to make music. It's more like waving Doctor Who's sonic screwdriver at random objects. That is, we know he uses it to open electronic locks, but we don't know exactly what other uses it can be put to, so we have to try it out on things.

In your case, if you don't feel you have anything to communicate, you're maybe just pointing it at things with an open mind as to what happens. If it blows up a car ... well, that's very interesting! When you have a stronger idea of what you want to communicate, ie. you want to describe a particular idea, or concatenation of events, or object or feeling, it's more like going in with an attitude of: "Let's see if this sonic screwdriver can help me jumpstart my car." You might still end up with an explosion - ie. an interesting result - but it forces you to try more options because you're actually after a *particular* result.

You say, "If I did it would be a real problem because I don't believe I have much worth communicating!" I find this kind of odd, because if you didn't think you had anything worth communicating at all you wouldn't say anything to anyone. Now, OK, the whole idea of poetry is that it's a step up from conversational/formal language, but I don't think it's *that* far removed, ie. what I'm trying to communicate isn't usually of deadly importance. It's just something I do want to share or give a sort of prominence to.

It doesn't have to be a self-centered thing, ie. what *I* have to give other people. It can be more a case of wanting to share something else of importance with other people. And you keep in close touch with a lot of things that are relevant, interesting and important. So I think you do have things to 'communicate' - it's maybe more wondering if you can do it in the right way?

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Fuselit - pocket poetry and art, made with love and diligence!

Roundtable Review - reviews, articles and new writing in poetry, fiction, film, art and stage.