Honesty time again.

I never set out to write poetry. The reason I did was because I needed a break from the long often laborious task of longer writing projects. I could write a poem, from beginning to end, within ten minutes. In some ways I had already been writing poetry in the form of song lyrics. Apart from songs having a need for verse, chorus and bridge there is little difference between the two.

 So, I ended up just every now and again starting write about something and seeing where it led. Occasionally it was nowhere, but then there were odd moments of inspiration that are quite frightening to recall considering I didn’t plan for any of them.

I have never been a great fan of “love” poems, as most of what has been written is now so clichéd it’s hard to find a new spin on the subject, but one time I think I managed it was a poem called “My Vacation from Masturbation.” The title came from a comment made by Bruce Springsteen during a live concert where that was part of his introduction to his wife. It struck as both incredibly funny and also quite affectionate. So I wrote a poem based purely on that. What came out was quite explicit and no-holds-barred, but it became a love poem unlike any other. Despite this, I have also succumbed to the occasional traditional love poem…unfortunately.

I have begun work on a couple of themed poetry collections. One being The Book Of Changing Times, a look at the world we live in. This has dealt with war, poverty, society, murder and a range of topics gleaned from daily news. These are probably some of the most emotional poems I have written, not necessarily the emotion of me but of the person’s viewpoint the individual poem is from. 

I did have fun with the second collection; putting some of the old children’s nursery rhymes and tales through the grinder, and giving them my own personal slant. I came up with the concept of having The Book Of Twisted Tales. Imagine if you will, Quentin Tarantino, Ken Russell and Tim Burton coming together to direct remakes of some of the most famous children’s stories and you will get the idea. These tales are not for bedtime reading.

The final poetry project that is ongoing is possibly the strangest of them all in the way it came about. I was walking through my hometown on a windy day. It was autumn so there were some dry leaves blowing around the cobbles and it gave me a line that I thought would maybe start off a song. Something about walking along the cobbled street, dry leaves blowing around my feet…or something like that. When I started to write it…well it didn’t really take the form of a song but instead became four stanzas about a mysterious person who saw things different to everyone else. Someone very lonely, pitiful but possibly dangerous.

It ended with the line “You do not recognize me.” At the time I thought no more about it. It was finished, I was being lazy and that was that. The next day however I had nothing to do and picked up what I’d written the day before. I briefly wondered who it was that we do not recognize. By chance I was looking up some Latin translations for a completely separate reason, and came across the phrase “Tempus Fugit, Mors Venit”; Time Passes, Death Advances. It just clicked. The poem I had written, which was close to prose, was sort of self contained and really wasn’t left with an open end, so I could have left it well enough alone. That’s not my style. Going all the way is just a start.

Without any planning or thought of what I was going to do, or how much I was going to do, I just began writing. Over the next few days I added further chapters, and each one now seemed to lead somewhere else, but I never knew where until it was written. It came to an end after six rather long chapters. The total piece was over 2000 words long and sort of defied the whole reason I had started writing poetry in the first place.

I will post a random selection of poems here from time to time. This month I have included three poems I wrote for a Children In Need promotion this year. They are all based on Nursery Rhymes, but they are not quite as many will remember them.