Warts, warts and more warts

As I may have mentioned (a few hundred times) I am getting ready to put out a book of poems. It should be out early summer. I haven't had an editor as such but I have been sending out drafts here and there and tweaking bits and all that kind of stuff. I've quite enjoyed it all so far. Some advice I have taken, some advice I may well yet take, some advice I know I should take but I haven't...I know an editor (proper) would take a lot more out, make me be harsher...maybe make it a better book...but I am happy with what I've got just now. You take out all the warts what does that leave you - Paris Hilton or something? Or the strange vision that is Joan Rivers' plastic face - anyone watch her on the voyeurs-r-us show this week?

Anyway, back to poems...I have shown the book-to-be to some poets and people in some way involved with poetry (are there any of the latter who aren't poets themselves? Not many) but I've also shown it to people I know from different walks of life. I am quite unashamed about the fact that I write more for what you might call non-poetry people than for poets, poetry magazine editors and so on. I have nothing against the latter it just seems to me that there are already a huge number of poets writing for that kind of reader - plus I can't help myself I just do like a direct, bullet-to-the-heart-no-frigging-subtlety-at-all poem every now and then and that can put a certain type of reader off, stop them taking you seriously. Personally, I just can't worry about that kind of stuff though- too much else to think about. I do write (and live) on instinct to a large extent and as I must have said (another few hundred times) it would be very dull if we were all just the same.

It's interesting how often the poems non-poetry people like most are the ones poetry people like least (and vice versa). For example this poem has been pretty much disliked by the pp and yet has been commented on much more favourably by other people who like its directness:

Significant other deceased

I wasn't ready
You're gone too soon
The kitchen's quiet
Lost its tune

I'm not prepared
No good alone
Why is it you
Who won't be home?

You're ripped to shreds
I'm picked apart
My love is gone
My love, my heart



RF about 2005

It has been one of my poetry postcards and it has sold well - I have met many a widow/widower who has it stuck up on their kitchen cupboards, fridges etc. They like the fact that it is about how bad you feel, how lost you are - no dressing up a terrible situation with prettiness or intricate images but instead talking about how it really is. Generally speaking older people like it (one of my Mum's friends bought a stash - 'oh my friends are being widowed all the time, I'll take ten'!). One of my friends loves it and sees it as the words of a woman who has been left by a man and who feels bereaved (but isn't really). All these reactions I find fascinating as I wrote it, in fact, after reading about a man bereaved by the London tube bombs in 2005 (hence the 'ripped to shreds' - some criticism has been levelled at this as a corny, exaggerated phrase but I meant it completely literally). The piece I read was one of those articles that you read, put down and then the poem just falls out. I come from a family of much bereavement so it's a subject I have thought about and expected a lot. I am still amazed every day when my beloved makes it home from work in one piece (wish I was joking but I'm really not).

So there you are. What would Dr Pamela Connelly MD make of me? (Answer - hopeless case?)