The Poetic Year
December 29th, 2011For me 2011 has been caught up with the wonder and new challenges of an extra member of our family – born at the end of January she like her sister is already a subject and inspiration of many children’s poems. Of which The Little Book of New Baby Poetry was the first of Many. Add in the issue of having to find somewhere else to move into – somewhere were I felt I could still be creative and it would seem like I wouldn’t have a lot of chance to focus on poetry but this has not been the case.
Instead I have found myself increasingly being asked to take part in poetry events, have finally produced The Little Book of Festive Poetry complete with illustrations and the like (this year only the special handmade editions have been avaliable – next year there will be print, ebook and audio avaliable and do not panic yes it has been edited and my dreadful spelling sorted out!). I am being booked for workshops and festivals. I managed to win a prise from ESA for my visual and poetic piece Celestial Montage.
True I never got around to sending poems off for publication but that somehow doesn’t seem to have mattered overly this year. The things I am sad about is that my poetry collection (as in the main collection not kids) has been put on a back burner but is something along with the Monster Writing Game that will be resurrected.
The main thing that I achieved this year though is closure and through the medium of poetry. When I had my first little girl just about everything went wrong and I ended up in hospital for weeks on end during the pregnancy and then in a wheelchair. And though the mobility issues have returned they are not so bad and have not been made worse by life threatening conditions. After my second was born via planned c-section the ease of it allowed me to finally think over the horror that was labour and write a poem I have called The Warrior Butterfly. I still can not read it out loud without choking up and doubt I will ever be able to read it at an event though I may try just for completeness. I have registered a domain as well were I plan to put all my poems about pregnancy and coping with the issues of a bad labour and living with a separated pelvis.
I consider that my poetry and art have become my career in the last two years and that this has bascially ramped up from the time I had my first child. Locked away in the horror of what had happened, finding out how close me and the baby had both come to dying and the isolation of finding myself in a Cotswold village away from all my family and friends, the career I was making an excellent start in ripped from my hands by medical issues – all of this had to be expressed but I could not talk of it not out loud at least so I turned to the other obsessions I had – not science, not climbing, not parties and found that those poems and doodles at the edge of my class notes through college had something.
I was being published before I was 18 so surely? Surely I could again? But it always seemed to be a bit naff a bit – people saying ‘writing? painting? oh yes I suppose you’ve got to do something with your time’.
I consider the Warrior Butterfly to be the most important poem I have ever written – not because it is great but because it marks the point at which the fear stopped choking. And writing – well that is what gave me enough courage to have another child. And I feel that I want to share my poems as much as possible – they help me, they may help others, they may just amuse for a while. I’ve had year of life changes mainly that I now say I was a geologist and now I am an Artist and Writer.
