(Maggie, if you'd like me to move this to another section, just say)
After a conversation between Anna and I on Trish's Lonely River poem, I got to wondering, what got you all interested in poetry?
As I mentioned, I've only been writing for a few years. I wrote my first poem on a flight home from work one night. I was watching a film (can't remember what) and randomly felt the urge to stop and write down how I was feeling, into a poem. Wasn't much of a poem, but still, I was hooked, and began reading more. I really didn't know where to start, so would buy random books in second hand stores, from well known poets to the obscure, and write and read at every opportunity until I found poets and a style I was comfortable with. I joined poetry circle which I found reasonably useful at the time, it was there I first came across Anna and Tom, however I don't use PC at all anymore. I don't why, but I remember being surprised at how much bickering went on. Now I know the poet's ego is a sensitive thing! I later joined a writing group, who would meet weekly, but unfortunately haven't found anything similar since moving back to Ireland.
I remember when I got my first poem accepted, I told my mum, who didn't know I had developed an interest in poetry. She got up and left the room, returning a few minutes later with a mint condition copy of Seamus Heaney's Haw Lantern, with a personal dedication to me from Seamus. He had visited the primary school where she taught, some 20 years previous, and he signed a few books. She thought then was the perfect moment to give it to me. I've attached a pic of it.
I don't know what drives me to write, I just enjoy it immensely, and feel a release or accomplishment each time I finish a poem, even if the poem itself is not very good. I'm not a prolific writer, at this point in my life anyway, and read more than I write. I don't believe I'll ever have multiple collections published but I would like to have one, even if I publish it myself, just to have. Also if time permits, at some point I'd like to study poetry, formally.
I would love to hear how the rest of you started out. If you don't want to share that's absolutely fine. I'm just intrigued.
This is a great topic and I'm happy to share my experience.. . though it isn't really about how I started off writing poetry but rather how I started off writing lyrics and songs.
Up till the beginning of my 2nd Year in college, I was playing and singing only “covers” … other people’s songs: songs by Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Cat Stevens, Neil Young, Elton John, Simon and Garfunkel, etc.
I wrote my own first song in August 1976.
I remember it all happened quite unexpectedly:
I was idly strumming my guitar in my hostel room one afternoon, when the first lines of my first-ever original song just came to me. I can’t explain how or why, but suddenly, verse after verse of lyric was literally tumbling out of my head and I found myself struggling to keep up, to write it all down, so that I wouldn’t forget anything. Over the course of that one memorable afternoon, I had my very first composition fully completed, with both, lyrics and music in place.
I remember being very surprised myself, albeit most pleasantly, by the suddenness and ease with which it had all happened. And how it all seemed to have happened almost completely involuntarily!
Once that creative tap had been turned on, there was no turning it off: the flow soon became a torrent... I was literally composing songs in my head all of my waking hours, when I was not working or studying… and sometimes even when I was: during meals, while walking back to the hostel from college, while taking a break in the evening, before going to bed, …. all the time.
Over the course of the next 3 years, I had written close to 40 songs…. roughly a song a month and most times I was working on two, maybe three, song ideas at the same time. I quickly realised that I would need to have a separate songbook to write down my own songs in and started one in late 1977 …. I still have that handwritten book with me today… with close to 80 songs of mine in it, as of today.