In search of my own poetic voice: A few thoughts about writing poetry with a link to my work at Poetry at Sangam

a shiver of unease
runs its course across
my shoulders, shudders
down a rocky spine
to dissipate
through fissures
in this sleeping
mountain
mine

Over the past couple of years I have, often in defiance, insisted on writing about the poetry I read. At the same time, my focus in reading poetry has shifted, taking in more contemporary poets, as well as experimental and translated works. But I know nothing about formal analysis, and even less about how one might set out to write a poem. But I’ve not let that stop me from attempting the odd poetic effort, even if I always feel like I’m writing into the dark. Stumbling into it sideways.

This month I have the honour of having several of my poems included with some truly fine poets and translators in the latest issue of Poetry at Sangam. My contribution includes a photo essay originally published at RIC Journal, a piece I wrote after I returned from central Australia. I’d gone to hike the Larapinta Trail and arrived with a brutal head cold brewing, so hiking was limited, but in that magnificent ancient land I sensed the presence of my mother in a dream for the first time after her death the year before. This piece recounts that experience.

My three new poems, all touch on authenticity, the body, and gender identity—pretty typical terrain for me, but one that I am beginning to feel may be best explored in a poetic realm as I move toward other subjects in essay form because, as I explain in my introduction:

Poetry, fractured prose, and fables have begun to play a greater role in my writing repertoire by offering a space for me to explore the raw, the visceral, the discordant elements of my being from a distance. It still arises from my own emotional journey, sometimes riding close to the arc of my narrative reality, but I can be abstract, ambiguous or disassociated from the speaker or the subject as much as I want or need to be. Many of my poetic efforts gestate over long periods of time, moving in and out of first person, falling apart and coming back together as need be. But in the end, it is all trial and error. I don’t really know anything about writing poetry at all.

My full introduction and links to my poems can be found here. And be sure to check out the rest of this wonderful issue at the same time.

With thanks to my dear friend, Priya Sarukkai Chabria.

Author: roughghosts

Literary blog of Joseph Schreiber. Writer. Reader. Editor. Photographer. View all posts by roughghosts