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Stephen Claughton
Julie Anne Gilligan |
WHY DO I WRITE? Some people climb mountains because they are there. It is like that with my writing. I write because the words, the raw materials, the building blocks of the imagination are out there waiting. We spend our lives accumulating an enormous reservoir of knowledge and experience and it would seem wasteful not to use it in the best way possible. I write because I can, though I didn’t know I could until I reached 50. I didn’t have time or ability to make time before then. Writing helps me articulate thoughts and emotions in a way that I sometimes find difficult in speech. By placing emotions into someone else’s persona and voice can help to clarify them and put them into perspective. Writing keeps my brain active and helps me pull into focus my place in the world physically, mentally and spiritually. I rarely write directly about Parkinson’s but it emerges from time to time in different ways. I don’t like labels and I don’t suffer; if you tell yourself you are suffering it only feeds a victim mentality. I have lived with the condition so far for 24 years, but it has to put up with me too. Why do I write? Because it has helped to make me the ‘me’ that I am and the ‘me’ that I might become. And if I can put a smile on someone’s face on the journey I will have done a good job. The following paragraphs are extracts from my Ars Poetica, written as part of my Open University MA in Creative Writing. I write because I believe that poetry: can unearth and express the extraordinary in the ordinary and vice versa; can change people, atmosphere, history, attitudes, politics, can give comfort in conflict or disaster, commemorate and witness; is the autobiography of an age, written by ghost-writers, a place and time peopled by imagination, illustrated with vignettes and visions. I write because I see the poet as: a scavenger of words, phrases and observations, the gull snatching morsels of credibility from amongst the dross of experience; a facilitator, a signpost on a treasure map of many paths, small parcels of metanarrative, that ancient conundrum that fuels philosophers and flummoxes fools. ©2018, 2022 Julie Anne Gilligan A short version was published in The Hoot. (OUSA online magazine) https://thehootstudents.com/poems-about-poetry/ The full version was published in ‘Red Letter Openings’ The OU Poetry Society 40th Anniversary anthology (2021) Julie Anne Gilligan is the author of Time Matters (published on Ist June 2022) |
COLIN PINK I write to stay alive; to try and process this aliveness; to find myself and lose myself; to share with others how being here feels, both the good things and the bad things. Writing at least makes me feel that I have some slender grip on how things are, even if this is transitory and largely a delusion. Sometimes writing is simply a cry of anguish at the cruelty of the human world. But there are also things to celebrate and writing reminders about that is important. The best poem is always the next one to be written. Colin Pink's writing website is at colinpink.wordpress.com. Dempsey & Windle/Vole published Typicity, his poetry collection, in 2021 |
SUE JOHNS |
BELINDA SINGLETON |
JANET LOVERSEED
Why I write
When I ask myself why I write I give myself a number of answers. Not all of them are pleasing or satisfactory but they always occur to me so I shall list them. I write: Because I’m better at writing than at anything else. (Discouraged in maths and music I turned to the measures and harmonies of language.) Because my poems are all that I can give to the world. (The world has plenty of poems already.) Because when I feel alone I see writing as a way of connecting with people, making them laugh, cry, empathize. (My writing may be rejected.) Because I’m seeking immortality: when my life is done my poems live on. (But nothing lasts forever.) Because I’m a reader and reading and writing go together. (Sometimes.) Because I want to make worthwhile discoveries about myself and others. (Possible only if I write with the clear-eyed honesty that distinguishes the thoughts and feelings I really have from those I would like to have or think I should have.) Because by nature I’m more of an observer of life than a participant in it. (If, in my company, you fall and are injured I’ll think of how I’ll describe the incident before I think of how to raise you and staunch the flow of your blood. I’m afraid this is the famous sliver of ice in the heart of the writer.) This last reason may also go some way towards explaining not just my writing but my writer’s block, something I’ve been experiencing since becoming carer to my partner who has an advanced cancer. My block may, of course, be simply due to tiredness and limited energy-levels, but might it not also be that life has taken over from art and observation, and that the sliver of ice has melted? I can’t be sure. Nor can I be sure that this state of my creativity is permanent. One day, perhaps, I may find myself writing the kind of poems which are emotion recollected in tranquility, or exploring life through fictional characters again, like my Headless Man or Ježibaba. Who knows? Janet Loverseed’s poems, Dancing with a Headless Man and Ježibaba are in her collection, Ježibaba, which was published by Dempsey & Windle in 2020 |
JEREMY LOYNES
Why I Write
Hand upon my shoulder There’s a hand upon my shoulder, there are voices in my ear. While I grow older, ever older, they still echo down the years. There’s a hand upon my shoulder, there are voices in my ear. Although the trail grows colder, colder, I still hear them, drawing near. There’s a hand upon my shoulder, there are voices in my ear. Still the embers smoulder, smoulder: all the fires that once burned fierce. Jeremy Loynes is the author of Turning |
Sue Wallace Shaddad
WHY I WRITE
I have a poem I wrote aged twelve and several as a student when I was finding out about relationships. During my career, I only wrote poems occasionally but the desire to write stayed with me. In 2014, to mark my retirement and to put a stake in the ground, I produced a pamphlet ‘A Working Life’. Since then, I have devoted much of my time to poetry, achieving an MA from Newcastle University/ Poetry School London in 2020. I have always enjoyed compressing feelings into words. I tend to write very quickly in pencil in a notepad. This could be in response to something I have seen, an art work or an aspect of a relationship. I write straight into lines. I find this much more natural than starting with freewriting When typing up the text I make improvements to the first draft and might well decide on the likely form. I typically write in tercets, quatrains or couplets but do also try out other forms. Usually, a poem will rest for a few weeks and I will get feedback from one of the poetry groups I attend. Reading at open mics helps test out the poems too. I know I need to discipline myself more – make more exciting language choices and deepen my thought processes. It is often easy just to be satisfied with the initial thinking, without pushing myself further. Dempsey and Windle published my short collection of poems about Sudan, ‘A City Waking Up’ in 2020. The poems are a distillation of years of memories of visits to Sudan to see my family; most of them were written there in 2016 and I checked detail of language and customs with relatives. I spent several years getting the poems peer reviewed one by one so it was a real labour of love. I have a particular interest in ekphrastic poetry as I come from a Scottish artistic family and this feels a way of carrying on the tradition, but in the form of words. I have enjoyed collaborating with a local artist and also with a photographer. Recently, I have started creating a collection about portraits of women and portraits by women artists. I have discovered that a collection is much more complex to create than a pamphlet, but it is an exciting project which is pushing me to write more and hopefully better poems. Sue Wallace-Shaddad Read more about Sue's work here: https://womensliteracysudan.blog/2022/03/13/a-city-waking-up/ |
TONY EARNSHAW
Why I Write
I have a quote pinned to my wall which says ‘Writing is not a job nor a hobby. It’s an addiction without a cure’. (Gill Adams). This is, appropriately, part of a rejection postcard from the BBC Writers Room. So I write. Poems, plays, novels, blogs. The odd lyric. Maybe a story. Writing can be a response to a commission, but often I just write. Sometimes I submit for publication, sometimes I publish myself, sometimes I just share the work. The main thing is to write. As a playwright who is also a poet, I have found a role in community theatre, writing promenade pieces with sketch, poetry, story and song intertwined. Building a story with an arc, consisting of lots of short pieces and plenty of opportunity for audience participation can be very fulfilling. Knowing that the community aspect of the project builds relationships, builds skills and self-esteem, and increases well-being is an added bonus. My inspiration can come from other writers, from a niggling rhythm or a desire to express a feeling, make or explore an argument, record an experience or a memory. The form can vary. I’m happy to be guided by the muse. The theatre company I co-run aims to entertain, provoke and inspire. If all my writing could do that, I’d be happy. Poetry can feel more personal than other forms of writing, more self-revealing, and that is, I think, one of the strengths of the form. It can be hard work, struggling for the right word or phrase, cutting out favoured lines – ‘killing your babies’ as someone put it. But it can also flow with ease and emerge close to its final shape. You never know until you put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard. I do both. How regular a writer am I? I write a blog on a fairly regular basis which can sometimes consist of, or include, a poem or can be prose. It keeps the juices flowing. I write poetry and for theatre more spasmodically, not least since the theatre company demands a lot of admin time. Creativity can’t be submerged though. Poems emerge! My work is available from Dempsey and Windle (Paths and Digressions 2021) and from my own website – I have a novel out as well as older collections of poetry. More insight into my theatrical work can be found on the Damn Cheek website. www.tonyearnshaw.co.uk www.damncheek.co.uk Tony Earnshaw's Paths and Digressions is available here |
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This is a blog written by Dempsey & Windle poets about their inspiration for writing poetry
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