A horror story in a text message:
Mum: We’ve been having a clear out. There’s a box of stuff for you to pick up.
Notepads, posters and photographs, certificates and instruction manuals, concert tickets and school work. Precious, priceless, trash. It’s still in the hall now - the box.
A corridor-blocker. The past in all its paper.
Throwing it away would just mean never coming across it again. It wouldn’t be bad, but going through it again is so good. Who am I to deprive my future self of a lazy rifle through these flimsy memories… and my memory is very poor; I blame the Nokia Snake, who tempted me into holding a phone all the time, even before the scrolling got good. When the socials came along I was already primed to be attached to a device, consuming only what was immediately in front of me, obsessively and endlessly, until I couldn’t see beyond the screen.
If I ditch this box of dreams, how will I ever remember I had them?
There is five years of university work in the box, from the five years I pretended to be a poet. This is not an imposter syndrome plea; I was genuinely pretending. And here’s the proof; I have never written a single poem for the sake of writing a poem. I have written a poem for a class, I’ve written a poem for a book, I’ve written a poem as an example of a poem for a place that needs words where a poem should be.
When I did my second degree, in poetry, I wrote poems to fit around essays. Poems were supporting evidence to theory and, honestly, they didn’t make any sense without the work that held them up. I was very confident in my ability to write a compelling argument for a poem, but I could never get behind the poems I produced; I didn’t mean them, they were just doing a job of making me a person who got a good grade in poetry. I’ve struggled with poetry for many years because I am fascinated by it, and held at a distance from it. In amongst the constant requirement to explain the work, I talked myself out of believing that anything I wrote was genuine. I don’t know how to write a poem as me.
I used to worry about this until I realised that no one was waiting for me to be a poet. I love words, and I love stories and even at the time, if you’d asked me at university why I’d picked poetry I’d say the same thing now; it’s the closeness. There is nothing closer to the word. I love the puzzle of a poem.
I love the value of a word when it’s a word in a poem.
In the last few years I’ve found my happy place; writing picture books.
A story, in sentences where the words can carry their poetic weight. And they have to be lovely to say aloud, and they have to be aware of themselves, like all the best poems. And like all my favourite writing, they say a lot in a little; they’re clever and compact and accessible. Writing a picture book text fulfils every promise I wanted to make to poetry without the essays or the footnotes1 or the research. And best yet, I can be the most of myself, my most honest, because I can write about feelings that I’ve really had or feelings my daughter has had, without positioning them in a wider poetical context to unpick again. My poems were always talking to other poems, but my picture books talk to a reader. Writing a picture book text is not easier than writing a poem, and I could certainly write supporting essays on picture book texts, but what I mean is, I feel genuine when I write a picture book, in a way that I could never commit to poetry.
I’m aware as I’m writing this that this is definitely one of those topics that no one asked me to talk about.
No one, absolutely no one:
Me: “Well, the reason I never pursued poetry…”
Of course I pursued poetry. Aren’t I chasing it down even now? Doesn’t it crop up in every single bloody thing my poor agent ever receives from me. I’m the desperate ex, STILL talking about the poetry that got away, even though it didn’t. Even though we’re married. Til death do us part.
One of my favourite poems is Frank O’Hara’s ‘Why I am Not a Painter’2 and as I don’t have a novel to sell you this week, I thought I’d share it with you.
Why I Am Not a Painter
Frank O’Hara- 1926-1966
I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
“Sit down and have a drink” he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. “You have SARDINES in it.”
“Yes, it needed something there.”
“Oh.” I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. “Where’s SARDINES?”
All that’s left is just
letters, “It was too much,” Mike says.But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven’t mentioned
orange yet. It’s twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike’s painting, called SARDINES.
I love this poem. It has never failed to make me smile. SARDINES!
It’s about extremely my favourite thing; writing about writing (ugh, I know) and the process of art, which makes it accessible and inspirational to me. There’s nothing I enjoy more than the feeling of potentially creating something, especially before I attempt it, when it’s definitely going to be really good.
But seriously, that the space is available for me to make something into, is exciting.
I could write twelve poems about orange. I could paint one or seven on canvas. I just like the idea of it, and I like that O’Hara gifted it to us so openly. It is so welcoming, so generous. There’s joy and inquisitiveness in those lines that makes me feel joy and… inquisition, about art and orange and the days that will go by. ART! ORANGES! DAYS! And I know that’s how it made me feel when I first read it in 2004, when I was pretending to be a poet.
Now it makes me feel even happier, because I can write about terrible oranges, and even though I will say ‘I’ve written a story about some oranges’, I will know it is my poem.
Sorry it’s been a ramble this week, and additional apologies to all the new subscribers (hello!) who have joined since my verified friend Curtis Sittenfeld retweeted my review last week.
I hope you haven’t been brought here under false pretences. It’s usually less about me and poetry and more about selling you an excellent book. Don’t unsubscribe just yet and I’ll get back to business as usual next week.
even though I love a footnote
Here’s the link to this version
Why I Am Not a Painter by Frank O’Hara - Poems | poets.org
Oh Katie, what a wonderful reflection! And I, with many ‘lost’ (and most likely truly awful poems) to my name, can honestly relate.
But to play with words, to be allowed the space and time to watch them slip from the pen and find a place on a blank page is bliss. To see works skip, dance or even skulk into place, to watch as they nestle beside or turn away from each other and to see what they collectively become, that is the beauty of writing. And that, is what you have just reminded me. That it’s not about becoming a writer or a published author (although - yes please universe) but about the sheer pleasure taken in the creation.
Thank you Katie!
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to find a pen! 😘