Why I write...

(If you're here for the poem  - it's at the bottom. If you're interested in why I write - read on!)

I've been observing lots of blog posts and articles recently about why people write. So I thought maybe I'd try and write my own...but it turns out it's a lot harder (without sounding arrogant or condescending, anyway!) than it looks.

See, I thought there'd be one reason I write, and one alone - i.e. I can't help it! Poetry seems to flow from me whether I want it to or not. And that's a noble-sounding reason, right?! But the more I receive comments and feedback on my work and the more I engage with my audience, the more I realise, there are other (more conceited!) reasons I write.

I'm a selfish artist - I write to satisfy my own desire to do so, and alongside that, I'm a narcissist who also writes (or keeps writing) because people read/enjoy my work. Would I write anyway, even if nobody read it? Of course - because I couldn't stop myself (the poems would just keep coming!) - but that doesn't mean I enjoy the feedback any less! I think, if we're honest, all writers revel in feedback - good or bad! We lap up the good, and we use the bad to improve...attention is attention, after all - but it's not all about us, is it? In fact, the selfish fulfilling of the compulsion to write and the joy of feedback, on examination, are smaller reasons for my writing than I thought they'd be...

You see, over and above everything else, I have a desire to comment on lives and emotions and situations - I'm an observer, a thinker, but mostly a feeler - and that's my biggest reason to write - because I want to make my audience feel. I want to affect you. I want to make you feel better or worse, feel love, hate or joy, repulsion, desire, fear...I want to make you blush, gasp, smile, cry...and all of it only with words. That's the joy of writing poetry... Every so often, a person will read a poem and be affected by it - they'll experience a moment they'll never forget. I know...because I've had that moment. Then they'll go back to that poem and re-read it, over and over - because they want to feel like that again. For some people, someday, that poem will be one of mine...and that's spellbinding. That's why I write.

And after all that prose, still the true poet, I think I can say it better in verse:

Poet, Heal Everyone Else

They know me as

a love poet,

a dreamer,

pain eater,

But I

have a nasty habit

of publicising

as a healer.

I don't always

mean

to entice,

to get it so right,

with minimal effort,

without foresight

to tempt them to my side.

But I am a glutton

for one who needs me,

worse still for one who

leads me to lie down

and ache with them.

Bitter or sweet

lend me

your agonies and your yearnings

for what are my

mornings

without

I have seen you

through the

night?

So...I'll get my coat then...if my head will fit through the door! :-)