Writing the Perfect Beast #29

Starting in October 2005, I decided to talk honestly about the business of how I write poetry. There are people who teach how to create poetry, how to format it, how to submit and how publishing in general works. I am not seeing that many people doing work on what you need to do with your brain and mental attitudes to make that stick, grow and then evolve. HI THERE.

Let’s see if we can change that.

This morning, via my Inbox, I was invited for dinner. Someone who is doing a week in residency at the Arts Collective would like to discuss their project with a poet over a meal. It's not a world away from a few weeks ago when I got to watch a Scratch Performance by two poets and asked to provide feedback. What this makes me feel and think is almost as important as the invitation in itself.

I find myself at the end of a month that I'd assumed would be me, reposting old work and not having time for anything else. My poetry, instead, has covered a hole that was letting a lot of unwanted emotional resonance through. Now it is sealed, there is again a progression in my output. Yesterday, a poem emerged from nowhere, fully formed and making a particular point.

It is time to focus on what matters to my soul first and foremost.

I'm beginning to want to draw again. That is becoming an incredibly important part of my process. I'd also like to spend some time with pencils and shading, not simply doodling. Maybe I'll pluck up the courage to share this stuff in due course, but mostly it will become a counter for the Sandwich Project, for work that extends past pages and into people's artistic imaginations.

I finished my first formal Art Trail project this week. I then discovered that the person I worked with has submitted some off-the-charts positive feedback to the Trail themselves, and suddenly the landscape has altered again. But, there's even better news, and that hit my Inbox about an hour ago. Believing in myself is beginning to have definite, inescapable consequences.

This is the one point I need to make today. Belief alters everything.

Tomorrow's amazing news (and it is for countless reasons) will be announced on Substack. The fact that since I have left there I've made more inroads into a sustainable career than was ever the case when it was my primary focus is a fact not lost on me. Sometimes, the furrows need to be ploughed by hand. You can't just throw seed out and hope for the best.

I'm also made up that a friend of mine will be celebrating a win of their own at the weekend. Sometimes it is all pointless unless there's other people to celebrate the successes with, and those people exist in my life now. I am grateful and appreciate every single one of them. They help me believe what might be possible if I can simply hold my nerve, and this week I am doing just that.

I may yet hold onto the World...