Sunday, July 08, 2007

Sunday Muse

When i decided to write and fell into poetry, i wasn't juggling with the assurity and eloquence six years slog of 12 hours a day addiction to this mad craft will bring.

Indeed my imagination coupled to paranioa and no confidence, self affirmed that i was an outsider, barred from the citadel of "Literature," and until i found the door was not locked and that all those inside are not all talking about me, hating me for my imagined gift or plotting ones downfall, did i seperate what i thought i knew based on guessing, with fact as i experienced it as an honest wannabee verseman; logically - as i see it - pursuing the correct course of study and approach, for one whose culture of verse was bardic for 1200 years and which no poets talk about with much authority, even though it is the most logical one to assume as the most sensible place to look for genuine poetic knowledge, stretching back to and containing the real druidic trace. The oscars of the poetry community.

Indeed the first time i found the door open, was when i realised that - actually - no one gives a toss about my writing and there was no love-in designed specifically to keep others out, as the mist of a self created chimera slowly wore down the more experience i got. Literally as the words stacked up, one by one, in whatever form we write, the dream becoming real.

Six years from Ollaire to Anruth in the bardic grade and it was only when a poet reached anruth s/he could publically offer their services, to wherever they could find work, or if they were in demand, to whoever offered the best dough. For the job was simple in this culture, and there were essentially two modes their gobs worked, either talking someone up or trolling them. Like a lawyer today paints a person black or white, honest or crooked, depending on whose paying.

I have always written on instinct, for what i dunno, but there have always been intellectual lights going on and poems i write in the heat of the moment that act as the markers of these breakthroughs, and my latest one is this, the final realisation in public as much for me as any potential audience.

It's not where you start out but end up, and being published is great, but not the be all and end all, for it is the inner eye, your I all alone who must first be happy before any else and other, for the only guarantee we have poetically, is ones own, and do not fall into the trap of hubris that appearing in this or that rag means anything other than your work appeared on a page, for it is the words that do the talking, not the marketing and spin of career blub compilers blinding in the fray to the one essential fact. That poetry is the highest literate Art and as a craft, as difficult to learn as any. Don't be fooled, speaking and seeking Love within is all it is.

No comments: