One of the first creative pieces I wrote outside the lines of homework was a little ditty titled Home, Home, Home. I was eleven years old and found soothing magic in that silly rhyme. I could manifest whole universes onto a page, just by casting some words about.
While the spells did little to vanquish the spectres that loom around an unrequited adolescent, the poems I wrote were innocent incantations wrapped up in secrets; taweez to pacify and protect.
I soon outgrew traditional rhyme schemata and found more space in free verse and bastard lines. That’s still the kind of place I like stretching out in and I’ve decided to focus on poetry for my Creative Writing MA.
How terrifically self-indulgent it is to tell people that I’m going to spend an entire year writing poems and reading them!
Between poetry and prose, I can’t say which is the easier to write. Both demand something different from the writer. I’d like to be versatile enough to be slave to both, but for now, I feel (and that’s the key to it really, the feeling) that poetry will be transformative. I may just find my voice.
