Poetry Forum

Just wondering what peoples stance was on their own poetry?

Ie:
What inspires you to write?
Who do you write for?
Do you have a particular subject area?

For example myself, I tend to write mainly about relationships, broken hearts and hurt, or tender moments.....these are when my feelings are really alert and my poetic side comes out...
Also when I travel or go some new place and my senses are feeling even more active than usual!
I must admit I do normally have to have some inspiration otherwise I am either stuck or I just feel the end result is bland!

As for who I write for, normally just me.....I will occasionally write a poem for someone but its based on my feelings and everything I put in a poem means alot to me and each line is normally based on some profound moment or memory that has struck me or is stuck with me...
As a result I probably tend to hold my own work in higher esteem forgetting that it is about something I have experienced and relate to that anyone else may not neccessarily understand or feel...

Anyway, figured this would be an interesting subject to explore!

Andrew

It's a way to capture a little piece of time, I suppose. Maps the changes too. Puts the brain into words..... I don't really know......

I usually write about regret or lost relationships. Like most writers I have to be in 'the mood' to write. I get really lost when I get stuck with writer's block. Unfortunately the blocks happen more often than the flows.

I think it tidies things up. Gives me something to do with all those fragments, bits and pieces. Trouble is I'm a scruffy get and don't often feel like cleaning up.

I get inspired by phrases; there is a lyric by the Decemberists which goes "at the gates of the embassy,our hands met through the bars...and your whisper stilled my heart". I dont know the rest of the song, but from those 2 lines, an entire story popped into my head, which I then reduced back down to a couple of pages of description. Maybe I will post it on here sometime. Incidentally, when I say it popped into my head, what actually happened was a process, as if I was reading it; I didnt actually know what would come next in the story, but each fact and movement naturally followed the previous one.

A different piece of inspiration was for a poem of mine called 'Disco Torture'. I was sitting on The Tube, and in the mood for writing, so I decided to try and describe the sound the Tube makes. I came up with (the frankly pathetic) "Rattle rattle", and then started to hunt around for a rhyme. The word I happened upon was "shackles", so I now had "Rattle rattle/Go the shackles", and suddenly what was going to be a trite and awful poem about the tube turned into a rather disturbing little poem in which a man is being tortured as a form of entertainment.

Generally, a phrase occurs to me, and then other phrases, related to it, follow fairly naturally. Sometimes the original phrase will not even end up being in the final poem, but it has generated the rest of it, and so it is still obliquely a part of it.

As for why I write, well I wrote a few love poems for my last girlfriend, several of which I was genuinely pleased with. Most of the time though, I write simply because I have had an idea; as someone who is inclined to write, it would feel very odd to me to have a good idea and then ignore it.

"the only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it immensely" - oscar wilde

I write because I have to, like having a shit...if you're lucky it's timely and proficient, if not it's a messy old affair...

Self-harm?
Can't decide whether it helps or hurts.
Distraction?
Confusion?
Different reasons for different sorts of writing. For poems, at the moment mainly to handle, reflect on and make productive my more painful emotions.
Helen

i think were all being a bit sentimental. the reason we write is because we are pretentious, egotistic, narcisistic and pompous.

I write cos I am a pented up emotional roller coaster who needs a flaming good ride on paper. I love the sounds poetry create and the fact a little poem can create a big impact whether a story, imagery, emotions you name it, poetry stocks and caters for all. To reflect and theorise a picture.

Writing creates the captured moments and time.

George Orwell states there are four reasons (nicely put) : Sheer Egotism, Aesthetic entusiasm, historical, political purpose. (pg 4 -5)

Orwell.G. Why I write. Penguin Books:London, 1984

To express feelings, purge them, and try to make sense of experiences which make a strong mark on me.

I write the things that I want to say to the people in my life, but I never have enough courage to speak the truth, so I put it in a place where they can't see it and in a form that is quite self indulgent.