A Life And Love Of Trying To Capture Flowers In The Dirt
A prosaic biography of poetry
My first real exposure to poetry happened way, way back in the late seventies when I started to go to night school at my local college of further education. I was very lucky in having two excellent teachers of A Level English Literature, Peter Steel and David Probert, to whom, in a very significant part, I owe a great deal of gratitude. It was under the tutelage of these two gentlemen that I learned all of the mechanics and spirit of poetry. One of the first poets I was introduced to was Ted Hughes. Hughes’ animal poetry leapt off the page and took root in the jungle of my fertile mind. We also studied the Metaphysical poets, which piqued my esoteric interest in things beyond the mundane. In particular, I adored John Donne and his sometimes outlandish flights of fantasy. In time we moved on to writers like Christopher Marlow and William Shakespeare, most especially the profound and highly significant iambic pentameter of King Lear.’ Then, for a little contrast, we studied Samuel Becket’s absurdist classic ’Waiting For Godot.’ And best of all, we were able to go and see wonderful theatrical professional performances of Shakespeare and Becket at The Exchange Theatre in Manchester. How can you not love poetry that is given a very unique, living, breathing life all of its own? After two years of those studies, I moved on to do a degree in the entire canon of English Literature at what is now Manchester Metropolitan University. Milton’s Epic ‘Paradise Lost’ and Pope’s Mock Epic ‘The Rape Of The Lock’ were standout pieces for me. By this time I was well and truly hooked on poetry and lapped up every single line I could cast my eyes upon. The marvellous thing about poetry is how much fun it can be, and yet quite deep and meaningful at the same time. But there are so many different other ways to see poetry. It is a form of communication which lends itself very well indeed to being used as a mnemonic aid (memory aid) and for a multitude of purposes like the recounting of cultural or personal history, or simply as a source of entertainment, information or learning. For my purposes, I write poetry to capture the essence of some random thoughts or a very clear idea, a full-blown concept or simply something which I have found to be an impactful experience.
What I try to do is communicate those things using words in a poetic form, to the very best of my ability. It is a little like looking to create flowers in the dirt of this thing we call life. What may come as a surprise is that despite the brevity of a poem, it can take a heck of a lot longer to write and edit than it takes to create a piece of prose.
Below are some links to some of my poetic efforts which I sincerely hope you dear reader, are sufficiently intrigued to explore and investigate further. Even better, it would be nice to know that you feel sufficiently inspired to set about writing some poetry of your own.
Dr Mehmet Yildiz Dr John Rose Desiree Driesenaar Dew Langrial Thewriteyard Stuart Englander Matt Lillywhite Geetika Sethi Tony Young, Jr. Terry Mansfield Henery X Denise Larkin Dr. Preeti Singh Rebecca Stevens A. Britni Pepper Agnes Laurens Ntathu Allen Haimish Mead CR Mandler MAT Robert Trakofler
