Me ThInKs

On poetry. Why it began. How it began.

These days I dread telling people, I write poetry. They give me this look of oh another lovesick nutcase, talking about the birds and the trees. Then I in an attempt to clarify, tell them, that I write dark poetry. Dark poetry? whats that? We have heard about love poetry, sad poetry, childrens poetry whats dark poetry? oooh I get it, you talk about death. Euh no, its not always about death. Oh so its sometimes about death. Maybe sometimes, but its more reflective about life and situations on the whole. At the end of the conversation, when I look at the person's face, I know they didnt understand a single word I said. The whole conversation would have been a lot different had I said i write novels.. ooh novels, now how different are novels from each other right? But poetry. Poetry always gets a different set of expressions and thoughts solely reserved for it.

So why poetry? It started when I was in school. My grandfather gifted me this lovely pink and white notebook. I had no clue what to do with it, and my mom told me in this jovial mood- why dont you write a poem. Did she really have any clue what poetry was all about? I bet not. That statement had more to do with her- I am feeling sleepy. Why dont you do anything to stay out of my way? And thats how it began. With my first poem titled- A Little Market in Space. Why such an out of the planet topic? I dont know. I dont even remember the lines, all I do recall is that each line rhymed perfectly with the next. Thats what poetry meant to me when I was 8 years old- a bunch of lines with the last words rhyming perfectly.

I wasnt the only one who discovered amateur poetry. So did a few other classmates. It soon turned into a kind of competition of see I wrote this poem, what did you write? We barely even understood what we had written, but we were all quick to praise. Thinking I had some major inborn talent to write which nobody else possessed I ventured into writing songs for the movies. If you take your favourite song, cut out the singer and the music, and look at only the lyrics, you will see that its probably nothing so out of this world. They are lines anybody could have written, its nearly always the music that makes a song so great. As a 9 year old, you tend to have mountains of confidence in your ability to do anything and everything. You can always do it better.

I stopped writing poetry for a few years after that. And took it up sometime as a teenager. Things had changed. It wasnt about rhyming any more. It was suddenly about NOT rhyming. So then started a series of poems on all sorts of topics purposely steering away from the usual cold-bold, make-take endings. In a bid to imitate the great poets, I wrote some poems on nature too. It didnt come to me easily at all, it felt living in a neighbour's house. I wasnt home yet.

My first brush with dark poetry came through Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. I still remember reading a poem by Hughes called- Hawk Roosting. There was this sinister element, a rather cold vibe, and a very dark feel to the whole poem. I liked it. What a change from the poems I had always read about daffodils, the solitary reaper and dover beach. That was when I began to personally talk through my poems- my emotions, my understanding of situations and so on.

The web offers one of the best platforms to learn and get feedback. I signed up with a site called thoughtcafe, which closed down soon after. But this site is important to me, because I met other dark poetry writers and learnt a lot. Soon I started posting at arcanum.com, and now I do so at darc( dreamers and rainbow chasers). Meeting poets from all across the world, each with their own stories, has been amazing. The way they weave their lives into poetry is beautiful. Poets get influenced by things that happen around them, it could be anything- politics, a walk, a fight, history, whatever... A poet who says he doesnt have his personal favourites is 90% lying. I have mine too. My top favourite is On Auschwitz ( written after reading Anne Franks Diary), the second would be Jesus vs Lucifer ( which seems to be a fav among my family and friends) and the third would have to be every other poem I have written.(:-) )

I love looking back at my earliest poem books. From class 5 onwards, how my handwriting has changed. If I ever doubt that I matured at all, I only have to read the pages to see how thought after thought has been laid down differently. I am no longer ashamed of my first poem. It started a different wave of thought, which I hope never dries up. I like to think that in the darkness I found my light.