Poetry Collection in ILLUMINATION

Poetry By Karen Madej

Write what makes you feel raw emotion.

A piece of advice you’ll get from every writer who has found this superpower. Tim Denning said it years ago in Raw Emotion Is The Only Thing That Matters: Here’s What To Do.

From the creative writing course I did for five years, I learnt that I could burst into tears at the mention of salty boiled potatoes in a poem because they made me think of my beloved (sadly passed away) Polish step mum who was crazy for boiled potatoes. The poem was The Simple Truth by Philip Levine.

From the sentence “Can you taste the words I’m saying?” my tear ducts and sinuses tingled and my arms erupted in goosebumps as I flashed back to the alcoholic suicide of my stepmother. I sobbed out long and loud then, making the connection between the simple flavour of boiled salted buttery potatoes and the simple truth of a lost loved one and words never shared.

For me, poems are only born when I feel strongly about a subject.

Here’s a bit of a racy poem about a body’s chemical reaction to another body.

Tim Maudlin’s story about empathy prompted me to write about a disagreement my sister and I had when she spat at me, “I don’t want your sympathy.” Ouch, I was actually empathising as I had already been there and bought the miniature monument.

Ancient was a writing prompt from the amazing poet Ravyne Hawke — you should definitely check out her work.

I still struggle with hearing the stress of words. For the poetry writing course I did, I worked with syllables instead. Nowadays, I prefer free verse.

A Dance of Distance came to me as a result of what had happened in the past and what is happening with the coronavirus and social distancing now. Like four-legged animals, we are sometimes wary and circle or for humans approach and back off — not our prey, but the interesting possibilities of relationships until we decide to either pounce or walk away

Bubble Burst Lives Hurt took ages to compile and following a conversation with a new colleague at work I believe the history of our current Tory torture goes back to Ted Heath’s (now Sir Edward Heath) reign from 1970 to 1974 during which he led the negotiations to join the European Communities — he was all for joining as was Margaret Thatcher to start with. Unfortunately, Heath was not so hot at the economics of a country and contended with high inflation and major strikes. I like him because he criticised Thatcher’s laissez-faire capitalism. In 2015, the BBC said:

“the first working-class meritocrat” to become Conservative leader in “the party’s modern history” and “a ‘One Nation’ Tory in the Disraeli tradition who rejected the laissez-faire capitalism that Baroness Thatcher would enthusiastically endorse.”

As anyone who reads my articles will know, I’ve been working in a call centre since March when my usual work — teaching English online to French business people — disappeared. You probably think a call centre wouldn’t be very interesting. You’d be right. But when my colleagues and I were treated like automatons I got angry enough to write the poem below.

I wrote If Eve Hadn’t Picked the Apple years ago for my creative writing course while also going through a phase of learning a bit about various religions — from a writer’s point of view.

Wake Up! was a Henery X (long) challenge. It starts off with the catalyst to my waking up and realising materialistic things didn’t make me happy.

I’m not sure Dr Mehmet Yildiz realised I wrote this after I read on Slack that he hadn’t had any time off since the publication started. He wasn’t complaining — you can tell he is 1000% passionate about ILLUMINATION — he was just sharing with the editors, as we often do on Slack! I really felt for him and wanted us to help lighten his load, it proved too much for me but editors with time on their hands were able to step in and take on key elements of the behind the scenes activities.

The views outside the call centre are stunning and inspirational.

Sun and Shadow was a writing prompt from Simran Kankas and the publication The Spiritual Tree. Bob Jasper and I both took the shadow part as being something dark. I love the supernatural and his poem THE SHADOW inspired my poem.

A Haiku by Chuck Roast inspired me to write one of my own, for all the reasons Charles Roast mentions in his article. He also shares the rules of writing a haiku which I followed.

The inspiration for The Carrier came from an article I read about women in their fifties being stealth carriers of the coronavirus.

Another from my creative writing days, based on an actual crazy weird nightmare!

A dark poem about a battle within. The person could me or anyone.

Two sides to a coin. Your’s spiritual mine scientific.

I was going through a cake-eating phase and had grown an extra chin. But then I started caring about myself again …

If you are thinking of writing a poem my advice is to let raw emotion guide your words right at the very moment you feel them scribble down everything you are feeling and thinking. Then the hard work starts.

Finding the precise word — take a look at R Tsambounieri Talarantas’s amazing work. I enjoyed her humour in Me and My Shadow, Rigopoula has an amazing way with words. I often have to look up her perfect choice of words.

Thank you for choosing to take the time to get to this sentence. You are appreciated.