Poetry is hard

Originally posted March 8th 20223

Like my essay on writing lyrics, poetry has made its way back into my life but this time for reasons other than an attempt at self-examination but because my dear friend, the artist and poet Devika Pararasasinghe (website, Instagram), asked me for recommendations. It was a while before I left London that she first asked on New Year's Eve. I remember it well as I made sweet potato curry then my cousin and I went to The Cat & Mutton where a friend of ours worked, eventually going back to my flat to play guitar and make up songs while pizza baked in the oven. But before the pub and the wreckage, Devika told me about her master's degree and that she started writing poetry. Like any good bookseller, I leapt at the opportunity to unload my entire poetry collection on her, the highlights being Poor by Caleb Femi, The Perseverance by Raymond Antrobus, and The Essential June Jordan. We sorted through the pile, seeing what was relevant to her practice and the amount she was willing to carry in her bag. I think she still has my copy of Poor. 

Since then we bring up poetry every so often in our day-to-day messages, usually referencing it in relation to writer's block or artistic frustration. But not long after I made the move back to America she emailed a collection of her work. I excitedly opened the PDF file and quickly read through her poems, then the next day I took my time to properly take it in. While reading I felt inadequate to give feedback, I’ve always struggled to articulate my thoughts on poetry in what I thought was the proper way to discuss it. I’ve always considered poetry to be an evocation, calling into your mind a dream or a memory so far off you can only recall the smell. Perhaps the better way to describe it is to compare it to fiction: fiction is realism while poetry is abstract expressionism. Obviously, these things overlap, but I’m trying to define the difference. It’s a lot easier to say why a drawing done in the style of realism is good or bad versus one that is abstract. What works and what doesn’t, etc. Reading Devika’s work evoked brutalism. I couldn’t help but think of the Barbican and Alexandra road estate while reviewing her poems, which I found funny because her work with textiles often feels more naturalist with the use of organic dyes. I feel lame saying that poetry is about “vibes” but it feels apt.

An example of my ineloquence of poetry is I am perhaps the one person who still does not understand what iambic pentameter is. I mean, I get the theory but whenever someone explains it to me it just seems like they’re putting on a voice and just saying it in a certain cadence that you could do with any sentence. I don’t get the stressed/unstressed part of it. It’s a bit like when I have to do any math equation, my mind doesn’t exactly go blank but there’s certainly very little going on (I like to imagine if someone were to read my mind in those moments, they’d see nothing but a game of pong). Everything slows down and is scrambled, like when letters move on the page and I have to put them back together. Everything takes a bit longer for me and this new run at poetry is just another thing on the list.

Writing poetry I am incredibly rusty at it, I think I decided for some reason or other in my early 20s that it was not my medium. For a while, I took the Jenny Holzer approach and made declarations that would be included in my paintings. As that phased out of my work, poetry phased out of my life. The only time I had any interaction with poetry was at the readings where I worked on occasion or the few collections suggested to me by friends. But I didn’t think about poetry that much.

In my late teens, I loved the classics: Sylvia Plath, William Butler Yeats, Elizabeth Bishop, and Seamus Heaney. I also had a soft spot for Emily Dickinson and Phillip Larkin but my opinions of them have drastically changed since then (Dickinson I love more and Larkin I like less). These were the poets being taught during my Leaving Cert (the Irish equivalent to A-Levels), and my reason really for enjoying their work was because it was what was being discussed. I have a difficult time falling in love with things I cannot talk about. It’s not that I don’t form my own opinions on these things, but because I’ve always found talking as a way to put shape to things. I work things out as I say them, constantly answering my own questions, which makes me not the best conversationalist but when on the same level with someone, it’s like a wonderful game of tennis. Maybe tennis isn’t the best way to put it? More like the classic American hobby of fathers and sons throwing a football to one another. There are no points, no real goal but we chat and work our brains to some conclusion. This was my favourite part of my English classes, the discussions on poetry and interpretations, not so much on how to write a good essay. There were two Higher Level English classes at my school, one for students who wanted to write the best essay for the highest points, an understandable choice if the required English lessons aren’t your cup of tea, and the class I joined which was, and I kid you not, nicknamed “The Philosophers” because all we did was talk. There may have been a bit of tongue in cheek to that name but at the time I loved it, now I just find it very funny and very self-serious teenage of us. I literally wrote a poem for my English teacher who was retiring the year I graduated, I would have him read over my poetry during the two years he taught me because it was fun. And also I was such a teacher's pet, my god. But the class gave me something I’ve held onto since, the love of discussion and literature. Not wanting to lose that love I chose not to study English in university, worried I would get sick of the subject if I had to study it 24/7 as I am a slow reader with a hint of dyslexia. Plus I wanted to move to London and had some dreams of being a bohemian artist (I did get to London and become an artist, but I lacked the cachet to be a bohemian I think).

Moving to London my new challenge was reading poetry alone. I had made several friends in my first few years but seldom talked about books with them. I visited the Brick Lane Bookshop near my uni halls, grabbing Warsan Shire’s Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth but beyond that poetry had fallen out of fashion for me. It wasn’t until I became a bookseller that I realised how behind I was on contemporary poetry, learning about all these wonderful poets like Will Harris, Caleb Femi, and Stephanie Sy-Quia to name a few. It was exciting and intimidating because, once again, I felt I lacked the language to talk about these works. When my primary way of expressing my admiration for something is discussion, how can I do the same for something I have a difficult time talking about? I don’t have the answer to this. But one way I’ve developed more appreciation of poetry is by writing my own. I begin to pick up on what works and what doesn’t, how much is style or overzealous. Perhaps I have an easier time talking about art and fiction because I spend a great deal of time making work in these mediums, so by writing more poetry I will be better able to talk about poetry (hopefully).

My work I think is still very melodramatic and overly romantic, but I think that’s part of the process of discovering one’s style. Stripping back the wallpaper to find the original colour, getting out pent-up ideas to make way for new ones, sorting through it like a hoarders house (my brain should be on an episode of the TV show Hoarders, there’s a lot of stuff that probably should go in a skip). It’s another practice, another thing to occupy me, another thing that makes living feel a bit more real. Sitting on the floor in my sitting room at the coffee table, jotting down ideas that’ll later be categorised into books, paintings, songs, or poems. Sometimes they overlap, but most of the time I can easily discern what should be what.

I don’t think poetry will ever be that serious for me, especially in comparison to painting and fiction. But as I get older I realise the importance of a real hobby, not something I hope will be some financial gain. Money clouds everything and we can’t live without it. It’s hard to do something that is in a literal sense useless (I wont get into the metaphysical argument of what is useful and what is not, a poem does not build a campfire). It’s hard to convince myself to do something that I have no intention of monetising. I love writing but I also hope I can sell a novel so I can support myself to write more novels and the same with painting. I love these things but I also want to make money from these things. It’s almost like I can’t justify writing poems because there’s no way I would ever make money, which is rather sad. It would be nice to brush it off and say it’s not that important but I’m self-employed and my free time is my work time. It is hard to find a balance but I try to take 20 minutes on a Sunday afternoon to write something. It’s a bit like when I decided not to study English at university, I’m trying to preserve the love.

The first poem I’ve written in the last two years is more of a ramble I suppose but Devika said it was a poem so it’s a bloody poem. I had a vision in my head, it was a woman who was very sad on her wedding day but also very happy. I had several songs stuck in my head at once, they all came up as I wrote down the whole thing. I’m not sure if it is consistent, or if it’s even done. But it woke up a bit of my brain that had been asleep for a long while, it’s stretching and my god there are a lot of cracking joints.

Wedding Day:

When I picture my wedding day, I am alone floating across the dance floor to The 1975s ‘About You’. Everyone is in their bubbles, I am invisible. The music fills up my chest and I hold my arms out and swirl. My eyes are closed, the light is warm, there is a distinct melancholy to my aura. But that has always been there. And on my wedding day it will still be. But I smile, my fingers tapping along to the beat, the acrobatics of a guitar player. My dress is off-white, satin, bouncing light. Maybe I’ll be crying. Overwhelmed with emotion and exhaustion. I am at peace with this vulnerability, I knew a day like this would be filled with it and I am at a point in my life where I am no longer ashamed of it. I always imagined a day like this would bring such a powerful wave of anxiety that I would not be able to go through with it. Is it the power of love, medication, therapy, self-confidence, a cocktail of them that pulls me down the isle? Water flowing by my ankles. A tug beyond the bay. Does my father walk me down (swim) or am I alone headed towards a stranger (partner, confidant, lover, friend). Is there a flower arrangement, a colour scheme? Did I whine about the bridesmaids dresses not being the exact shade (under) I wanted or the cake being a tier too small (am I too large to be here)? I haven’t thought that far. I only imagine myself alone on a dance floor in a long off-white dress mouthing the words. Happy and sad and in love and depressed and if I’m feeling very romantic someone in this dream takes my hand and pulls me towards them but they never take away this feeling in me but their face makes me smile and perhaps we sing along to the song playing, maybe they picked it especially for me and I am still both terribly sad and terribly happy and I do not know how to explain this loneliness as bearable despite the pangs so long as I am here on surrounded by music and loved ones but alone moving it about between my fingers like
a beetle.

An event like this will only exemplify the loneliness.

I am on an island that can see it’s neighbour where everyone is and they wave at me sometimes but mostly go about their business. They cannot hear me yell or/and beg someone to swim to me and I am embarrassed to dance all by myself here where everyone can see me but there is no one to dance with and even the music is off and rough and blocky and my hands cannot pluck at the strings or tap the synthesiser it’s all wrong.

I listen to ‘futile devices’ by Sufjan Stevens and I know I have loved like that, the tenderness of friendship, the tug out of the dark into a glowing evening where we are sat at a long table and hot food is passed hand to hand and we do not say prayers here we tell stories “I remember I remember I remember” “You said you said you said” vignettes laughing away the night.

‘I Still Remember’ by Bloc Party runs past the train: silence, murmur, clarity, murmur, silence.

I love people but I don’t think I love them right.

Is love a practice like knitting or football? Are some people just better at it? I sit under the bleachers listening to the sounds but that’s as close as I can get.

The dream ends with me outside smoking a cigarette (I have quit but in dreams that’s not important). This is the happy ending I dream of: The dream where I am alone outside on my wedding day, no one knows and no one asks where I am, but you, you walk out so nonchalant and find me here. You take a drag. You have no face, not yet (maybe, you may never fill out). Will either of us smoke at this point? Have you ever? Our emptinesses fill each other up, perhaps together we both know it will never be gone, and it’s that moment. The exchange of looks.
We bask in the silence alone together.

Thank you for reading

-Enya xx