1001 poems

Click on image to enlarge

I've never been one for anniversaries, for looking back, peering over the top of the pink-tinted glasses, sighing in an affected manner and wishing I'd done things even a little differently. Perhaps that's come about because I find I have more regrets than whatever the opposite of 'regrets' is. I guess I don't know that one because I don't get to use it very often. That said I've always imagined myself in my old age shuffling out of the dark, like Krapp (but without the unfashionable pointy white shoes), thumbing through my great big volume of poems and wallowing in some scrap of mediocre love poetry. And it is a great big volume of poetry, a four-ring, A4 binder three inches thick. If I were to hit you over the head with it it'd do you some serious damage.

I started the volume in 1977 with my 453rd poem, my first 'adult' poem, 'adult' as in grownup not risqué, and in July 2008 I finally reached no. 1000. Thirty-one years to write 547 poems. Yay me. I have no idea if that's good or what. The thing is, when you look back, there are actually several years when I wrote nothing or next-to-nothing. I printed them into a graph, the graph you'll find at the top of this blog, and you'll see … well I'm not actually sure what you'll see or what it proves. That is what it is.

What I can say is that the poems written in 1991 really belong to earlier years. Being unable to write I went back to my notebooks and tidied up a few poems to try and get my juices flowing but the real truth is that I didn’t have two poetic ideas to rub together between 1990 and 1993 inclusive. I really thought that was me, done, finito. It was in 1993 I wrote Living with the Truth, again just something to do to try and get started again. Who in their right mind would deliberately sit down to write a novel after a) such a long dry spell and b) never having written anything bar poetry since he was a kid?

I like my red folder. I didn't mention before but it's red, not quite fire-engine red but in that ballpark. Amazingly the spine hasn't broken nor has the metal thing with the rings come off. I like picking it up to put in a new poem; it has heft. I like writing a new poem. You'd think by now that it would be no big deal but there are some things in life that are as good now as when I was a kid: I still get a kick out of lightning storms and chippy chips; never had them both at the same time though.

I always dreamed of getting to 1000 poems. I'm not sure what I expected to find or feel when I got here. No, 'dream' is too strong a word. I didn't dream about writing poem no. 1000. I just kept writing. There were times in 'the wilderness years' when I never thought I'd make it but I suppose that's the thing about the future, you have no idea what's going to happen. I'm convinced my current novel is going to be the one to get the better of me but then I was pretty damn sure I'd never finish the last one and don't get me started on the one before that. God Almighty!

I wrote a thousand poems. What does that say about me? What is it about us that demands that things mean something? I'm a poet, I really should be able to answer that one. I've spent my entire life looking for meaning in the oddest places even down the back of the settee. A lot of people think poetry is a waste of time. I've certainly wasted a lot of my time writing poems. Well, when you do the sums, actually not that much time at all; I'll have spent more time peeing. All of which was going though my mind when I actually sat down and wrote my one-thousandth poem.

In fact my last few poems have all been about the nature of poetry. I've been doing this for donkey's years and what exactly have I been doing? Is poetry a waste of time? Have I wasted my time being a poet? I decided to write about it:

THE LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR           1000


The function of
this poem is
to use up time.
There is no more.

You should leave now.
It will do you
no good to stay.

I have captured
your time in this
poem. It is
now lost to you.

You should leave now.
It will do you
no good to stay.

This is my sole
function. It is
not open to
arbitration.

You should leave now.
It will do you
no good to stay.

I cannot be
more than you see.
I cannot add
meaning to loss.

You should leave now.
It will do you
no good to stay.

You should leave now.
It will do you
no good to stay.



Friday, 11 July 2008

So what do you do once you've written a thousand poems? You just keep going. There's nowhere else to go. The thing is now I've got that out of my system where now? Two thousand? Yeah, right. One thousand four hundred and fifty-three – a thousand grow-up poems – that might be do-able. When I was a teenager I used to look forward to reaching benchmarks, 18, 21, 30 even 40 but since then I'm not looked forward quite so much and certainly not with any great enthusiasm:

FAILING           1001


My mother taught me
           how to be old.
I watched her falter
           then fail and fall.

At least she tried to
           teach me but what
           did I care to know
           about such things?

Now I'm old myself
           I wish I'd paid
           attention; I'm not
           sure I ache right.

I am sure she'd have
           something to say
           about my limp, how
           I hold my hip

           and her 'stupid cough'
           I can't get right.
I must be such a
           disappointment.



Saturday, 02 August 2008

Sad git getting ain't I? And, for the record, I don't have a bad hip and a 'stupid cough'. My mother had both and it was her that called her cough 'stupid', not me. I have developed a bit of a limp though recently; haven't quite got it mastered yet.

Of course there are writers who at my age had written more but I've also written more than some writers did ever, Larkin, for example. Quantity is not everything. That said, none of us knows how long we've got. I'm not so sure if I'd taken a different path I'd have written any more than I have. I'd likely be better known and have more stuff in print but I can catch up there. I've never stopped writing. Correction, I've never stopped being a writer. The chart shows that there have been times when I've been unable to write but life made a lot less sense at those times.

Who am I kidding … life's never made any sense and Christ knows if any of my poems do. (Please feel free to rush to my defence at this point and do try to form an orderly queue).

Was a thousand poems a goal or a dream? I think if it had mattered to me it could fit under either heading and I could present a convincing argument. The fact is, it was not something I worked towards. If anything it was an obstacle to overcome.

I looked up "writer goals" on Google as, as you would expect, I got millions of hits but I picked this one almost at random:

1. Set goals: Let's face it, goal setting has a bad rap in our culture. It's linked with New Year's resolutions, diets and promises made to our mothers - in other words, hard to follow, easy to break. Another way to fail.

But we all need a measuring stick - a way to check in with ourselves and take honest stock of what we've done and what we plan to do next. If you think back on the main accomplishments of your life, they were probably begun with a specific plan and a systematic method that lead to completion. Write down your goals and make them realistic, measurable and concrete. Commit to big, ambitious, five-year goals and practical, doable goals such as tidying your desk every night. Once you've committed to your goals, post them in places where you'll see them often. – Five must-dos for every writer

I'm not sure that I agree with all of this but I've never been fond of the whole motivational speaker thing. I think if I had a list of targets, or even a target I'd actually be discouraged. The target would become my reason for writing whereas I've always seen writing as its own end. Okay, when I'm working on a novel. I do check the word count obsessively but I'm always looking back at what I've done. I never sit down and say I have to write a thousand words today or even five hundred. I might reach that target and say to myself, well, that's me done my allotted writing today. And that's not how I write. I can only imagine the depression I could sink into if I attempted NaNoWriMo. Just the thought of it is depressing and I need no help in that direction.

Do I have a goal right now? Yes, several. I need to be better at keeping up with my submissions. I need to find time to read more. I need to make time to do a final edit of Stranger than Fiction. I need to keep up with my schedule for blogging. And I need to finish my current novel. And I need not to get down when I don't get everything done because I'm simply not in control of every aspect of my life. Some of these are ongoing goals; others will get closed off and replaced by other tasks. But I don't have dates and quantities attached to any of these. Really most of these are things I keep at the forefront of my mind, things not to forget rather than goals or targets in any formal sense.

Of course everyone is different but I think what I'm saying is that, if you keep working steadily (yes, I suppose that could be regarded as a goal in itself) you will accumulate a substantial amount of work in time. As for whether you're granted that time… Ah, that none of us knows.