Creative Writing
This page contains non-fictional writing, including short stories and poetry.
Poetry
The voice is raised, and that is where poetry begins (James Fenton, An Introduction to English Poetry)
If poetry begins when the voice is raised, then what I wrote during and following my second year at university cannot be called poetry, since it I always wrote it covertly, with a slight sense of guilt and shame. I think this was because I felt I was doing something unique which would have seemed slightly alien, even to my educated and open-minded social peers. Simultaneously, though, I was not comforted by entering that other group in which writing placed me, because I was daring - presumptuously - to do something with language which was of the same form as that practised by Donne, and Shakespeare, and Lowell and the other poets in whose noisy, brilliant meeting I was at that time privileged to be sitting as a Literature student.
This is why for years I wrote in a corner, in a non-public, unpublished space, telling no one except those closest to me that I did write. Having left, meeting of minds, though, I am not bothered about whether these poems are taken to be 'good' when looked at under any objective lamp, to be as worthy of spending five minutes reading as a Bishop or a Blake. By putting them here, my voice - though still weak in comparison to the epic boom of Milton or Byron - has been raised, and poetry, not the finest but still, I hope, poetry, has begun.
The poems appear in roughly chronological order, though where two poems seem to resonate with each other in their subject matter I have placed them side by side. Please browse the collection now, starting with:
Decisions I
These lazy, hazy, heavy-dog days
sniffing grass, scorching skin pink
and all those other things
I meant to do
have to
still
never will
Oldest PoemRadio Ga Ga
Late at night, my hands in bitty suds
My windowed image set against the sky
The radio flashes reports of distant guns.
A horrid double pun, the news from them
Finds me as quickly as the lobbed shells arc
to their marks a mile (an earth) away.
Most Recent Poem
I have not commented on every poem, as I believe that if a poem needs explanation of what it is about it hasn't achieved its aim; and if it has achieved its aim, the poem will lose by my describing precisely how I feel any ambiguities or meanings should be resolved within it. Such acts of despotic interpretation I want to avoid. Nevertheless, I have sometimes commented to provide relevant autobiographical contexts, or where I felt I would gain an understanding of my own technique by self-critically evaluating how well the poems fit the circumstances and emotions in which they were written. These are describable far more easily in prose, though without the emotional harmonies that subvert or support the words of the challenging poem. If you feel the poem has worked, or not, please let me know by completing the comments section below each poem. Finally, I hope that perhaps my (and your) comments will show that poetry - like found artwork or candid photography - can arise out of the most mundane things, is written by the most ordinary people, and may assert its potent personal significances almost regardless of its aesthetic values.
Top of Page
Short Stories
She is out there every morning on the shingle, with her dog. A lovely, bouncing border collie, sniffing the sea like it, too, is a live animal, dashing around like there’s no tomorrow. Every time he gets wet, he runs up to her and shakes himself in a windmill of spray. Every time she jabs her finger at the ground, shouts at him, and every time she ends up laughing. I laugh too (inwardly, of course). I wonder if she knows there’s anyone watching?...
Top of Page
Your Comments on "Creative Writing"
To add your thoughts about this page, use the comment form below.
Top of Page
Comment Form for "Creative Writing"
Top of Page
