Creative Tuesday
So this week’s creative Tuesday at the incredibly creative action of being on a Monday various things meant I had to switch my days round and I’m pleased to say I had a really productive day yesterday.
Most of the time we spent quite simply writing poems. I can’t remember the last time I had a day doing that. I began with working on what’s quite a long poem that I’ve been teasing out for the last week or so. It’s a curious work process for this one and one that’s unusual for me. I find myself working on it line by line - I wrote the original piece in in one fell swoop and knew what I wanted to say but it was a pretty bad poem. Over the last week I’ve been taking each line of thinking what am I actually trying to say, how am I going to make that a more enjoyable to read, how can I give it a better “mouthfeel”. The subject isn't deeply unusual - I think it's heart is a universal feeling and for that I need to express it in a more unique way. I’m loving working on it and I’ve got a good feeling about it.
Other than working on the mega poem, I spent the day going through some of my notebooks from last year looking at my poems about my dad and about grief - little snapshots of moments. I’ve very much ignored these and some of them are going to just live in my notebook but some of them do need to come out and need to fly. My first stage is just to filter which are which and copy them out of the notebook onto my computer. Next week I’ll go work through them actually as poems and how how they might fit into something bigger. It appears I’m slowly building what I hope might be an actual full book of poetry.
I’m so dismissive of my own work I realise. I look at people and think well how have they got there? I realise they've quite simply done it. In my head I thought I had to wait to be asked to write a full collection (I realise now this is ridiculous) what I need to do is get it all together and get it out there. I can be astonishingly naiive about things but I guess you don't know what you don't know.
From now on I’m going to respect my own work. I’m going to care for it like I do my garden, nurture it, prune it and make it into something as beautiful and brilliant as it can be. Now that sounds big headed and I am terrified of the thought that I might sound big headed. I’m not. On the other hand , if I don’t respect my own work who else is going to? There’s a wonderful Dolly Parton quote that goes something like “If I don’t tell them who I am and what I do how the hell are they gonna know” My goal this year is to try and get over this sense of “oh I’m not good enough” and “I’m not worth anything” because if I keep saying that to people that’s what they’re going to believe. I'm going to start telling them what people keep telling me - I'm a good writer and I've got something to say.
The rest of my week is devoted to client work. I’ve got two more lovely bespoke wedding poems to work on which is just the most joyful ways to spend my time, plus an another article to do for SnowOnly, a ski property portal. So a nice writing week, a deep clean of the kitchen, lots of sowing seeds, lots of planting the garden. A decent week ahead.
Until next time
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To read more of my poetry follow this link to Kathryn Anna Writes