My illicit affair with poetry

Why does it feel so forbidden?

This piece first appeared a few weeks back in Footnotes, my email newsletter.

I’m sharing it here because I’m still sneaking around. The poetry obsession has only grown since I wrote this. The Poetry Pharmacy in London sucked me in, as did bookshops all over London. But this trip, the majority of what I bought were poetry books, rather than novels. Curiouser and curiouser.

Poems have ignited something, and my novelist self is nervous about this. As I slip into a book of poems to explore, is this pulling me away from my novel? Perhaps, in that moment, but does this mean I’m hurting the novel?

Do you have to be monogamous with your genre?

I think we are enriched by reading and writing widely, especially when we stray from the usual paths we stick to. Letting myself continue this poetic affair is an experiment. I’m indulging and we’ll see what unfolds for the novel.

And now, the afore-mentioned piece. Stay tuned for some news on the future of my Footnotes newsletter… I’ve had some exciting ideas lately and those of you here on Book Alchemy will be getting even more treats starting this month.

More soon…

I've been sneaking around lately.

Despite my devotion to the novel, I find myself, up late at night, reading poetry books. Not just actual poems, but books about poetry. The theory and construction of poems, if you will.

In a similar fashion, sewing and dressmaking have enraptured me recently, and it strikes me that these two art forms aren't entirely dissimilar. There are different types of seams that hold sections together, be they of cloth or of imagery. Clothing can have a rhythm that feels like verse, and poems can feel as reassuring as a favorite old sweater.

There is a delicious forbidden question that has been rearing its head:

Do I, perhaps, want to write poems?

I don't have any plans to abandon the novel I'm writing, but this has opened up an energy about writing that I haven't felt in quite some time. Short story writers who also write novels always seemed to have the best of both worlds: a project to sink into over years alongside pieces that could reach a finished form more quickly.

What if poems could be that for me?

The emotion that comes up when contemplating sharing a poem publicly is pure terror. If short stories intimidate because of their condensed forms, poems feel like complex tricks executed at speed, while on ice, like a figure skater. I doubt my ability to stick the landing and have little desire to try in front of an audience.

But the siren call continues

I wrote a piece about feeling fear when writing, a topic you know is close to my heart. To paraphrase, in my experience, feeling fear is evidence that there is energy there, and that the potential risk that brings up the fear must be juicy and potentially transformative, to make it scary.

Poems feel scary. But titillating, scary.

What feels scary to you?

Is it reading a different genre? Writing something unexpected?
Sharing an opinion that might be a bit, well, much?
​Is it scary to imagine writing in any form at all?

Shall we all dive into the deep end of the icy pool together?

I think it might be glorious.

Hit reply and tell me what feels scary to you now. We'll wave across the world and jump from our own ledges, knowing someone else is screaming on the way down at the same time.

Ready? Set... go!