Attempts to Be Poetic

I wrote the following poem immediately after reading 'The Cult of the Noble Amateur' by Rebecca Watts, a link to the Guardian summary here. Personally I don’t think that a poem has to change the world, but it at least has to take the readers hand and lead them through an undiscovered part of it.

Most importantly I have to be able to trust that the poet has discovered the full extent of what they are trying to say to me. Every emotion contains multitudes and I hope writers make room for that in their poems; and if they can't then the emotions should at least be ambitious and the devices nuanced.

If modern poems no longer fall from the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil, where do they fall from? Do modern poems function like palm fronds from the most aesthetically pleasing trees. Maybe that is their power, maybe they are our best literary attempts at emotional relief not emotional intelligence.

Often I want to say when reading work by the poets that Watts mentions and others: what love got to do with it? What does the immediate recognition of love, sisterhood and other modern ideologies got to do with the poem, if it's not serving to convey the full image of the 'I/speaker' or the arguments surrounding the 'you'. What's constant enjambment got to

Do with

It?

Regardless the toughest question to ask: What sort of writing does the reader deserve? In answering I would say that the Old Man at the Writing Desk image is certainly a noble one to turn away from in modern poetry, for both critics and creatives. I believe literal immediacy has so much to give, even if their aspirations are rooted in anti-establishment esque yearning. Low-key I hope end-stopped lines come back in fashion and without irony.

Feel free to follow me @gamuchiraiistrue on instagram if you dare