Poetry created in response to an extraordinary place...
To browse and buy my collection of Scilly-inspired poetry - Songs of Here... and Elsewhere - please visit the Shop.
(Read on to find out more...)
To browse and buy my collection of Scilly-inspired poetry - Songs of Here... and Elsewhere - please visit the Shop.
(Read on to find out more...)
THE STORY...
I have written the occasional poem ever since I was an awkward and oversensitive teenager. Very little has changed now that I am old, awkward and oversensitive - I still use the magic trick of distilling moments of my life into words as a way of processing things. Transforming experience into poetry is, for me, a therapeutic experience.
I make no claims for my own poetry: I have no chance of being added to the hallowed 'literary canon', nor any desire to be canon fodder - I do not write, nor want to write, great verse (though I certainly aim for a place north of 'bad poetry', wherever that is). To my mind, we have become obsessed in the 'creative industries' with a quest for world class excellence, rewarding the brightest and best (or most popular at least) with fame, riches and ubiquity. And this brings a few problems: not least, it leads us all to listen to the same music, read the same books and see the same shows, stifling diversity. Moreover, it tends to deter creativity in anyone without extraordinary talent or application, inducing paralysing feelings of inadequacy by comparison and it sets the bar very high for any sense of creative fulfilment - unless we have a global audience and a national profile we have failed as artists, we are led to believe.. The cult of the divinely-inspired artist genius (which only really emerged with the Romantics in the 19th Century in any case) has done great disservice to honest creative artists and craftspeople who have something to say and a few people to listen to them. None of us should feel embarrassed or ashamed to create - human beings have felt the impulse to make art for at least the last 50,000 years or so.
I write poems primarily for myself, but also for those I love and for anyone else who might like them. Often, over the years, the poems have been about the island on which I live - so those who love St Agnes may well find something to connect with, and something to feed their fascination with the place. Scilly is constantly inspiring, and my hope is that a few readers will share and recognise the creative impulse I experience when writing.
Here are a few of my island poems: (Please click on the links to read...)
To browse and buy my full collection of Scilly-inspired poetry - Songs of Here and Elsewhere - please visit the Shop.
I make no claims for my own poetry: I have no chance of being added to the hallowed 'literary canon', nor any desire to be canon fodder - I do not write, nor want to write, great verse (though I certainly aim for a place north of 'bad poetry', wherever that is). To my mind, we have become obsessed in the 'creative industries' with a quest for world class excellence, rewarding the brightest and best (or most popular at least) with fame, riches and ubiquity. And this brings a few problems: not least, it leads us all to listen to the same music, read the same books and see the same shows, stifling diversity. Moreover, it tends to deter creativity in anyone without extraordinary talent or application, inducing paralysing feelings of inadequacy by comparison and it sets the bar very high for any sense of creative fulfilment - unless we have a global audience and a national profile we have failed as artists, we are led to believe.. The cult of the divinely-inspired artist genius (which only really emerged with the Romantics in the 19th Century in any case) has done great disservice to honest creative artists and craftspeople who have something to say and a few people to listen to them. None of us should feel embarrassed or ashamed to create - human beings have felt the impulse to make art for at least the last 50,000 years or so.
I write poems primarily for myself, but also for those I love and for anyone else who might like them. Often, over the years, the poems have been about the island on which I live - so those who love St Agnes may well find something to connect with, and something to feed their fascination with the place. Scilly is constantly inspiring, and my hope is that a few readers will share and recognise the creative impulse I experience when writing.
Here are a few of my island poems: (Please click on the links to read...)
- Scilly Dawn
- Synagnesthesia: Wingletang, Late June
- The Garden on Gugh
- Tresco Sound
- Death of a Scilly Shrew
To browse and buy my full collection of Scilly-inspired poetry - Songs of Here and Elsewhere - please visit the Shop.
AN ISLAND LIFE
Website photography by Rachel Lewin (An Island Wife)
Website photography by Rachel Lewin (An Island Wife)