Poems about Poetry

A Potted Ars Poetica

‘Poetry can change people, atmosphere, history, attitudes, politics, provide comfort in conflict or disaster, commemorate and witness.’ Julie Anne Gilligan, 2018

Know the rules, then how to break them, make them work for your intention.
If they don’t then make your own. Experiment, espouse invention. Become
a walking dictionary, words are here to use not bury, employ syntax to twist
and turn, bend it all as necessary. To find a form is liberating, sentence,
structure, repetition. Nonsense can make perfect sense, wisdom comes with
confidence. From brain to page much dross is lost. Be bold, be brave, all’s never lost.

Footnote: A Poet is a facilitator, a signpost to hopeful destinations, a map of many paths, ideas, emotions, questions, answers, all in small parcels of metanarrative. Remember, nothing is set in stone unless or until it is your epitaph…and even then…there are ways.

A Poem is...

An allotment to be dug.
Arduous at first glance,
but the reward is in the graft.
If you plunge your hands
beneath the surface,
you'll unearth its fertile roots.

Ink

Ink, knows and waits. Like a loyal dog.
Patience. The pen’s black blood primed
To course through the veins of its writer.
Tight-lipped. Until it hears the whistle
And herds words with a voice that
Breaks the silence and lays bare.

Michelle Rose © 2019

Dear Editor (Ars Poetica)

For you, I'll murder my darlings,
dismember loved ones,
discard their bones.
For you, I'll hide my amateur crimes.

Say something,
your silence is killing me.

Pen

Pen the poesy
So to satisfy the soul:
Skill and art combined.

Some Poets

Some poets write for the page
some poets write for the stage
some poets write out of rage
but most of us like to engage
with life and the people who live it
and share the concerns of our age.

Gasping at Sunbeams

Writers in attics, finders of words,
Capturing moments that flutter as birds
away in the skies they skitter and fly
gasping at sunbeams, telling no lies,
finding the essence, of how things might be.
Form, shape, rhythm, lyrics, formal or free.

tanka: ars poetica

black text and white space
here is meaning in essence
broadened by its bounds
sense condensed and soul unsealed
such colours in monochrome

Kimberley Pulling

Poetry Stew

A little bit of this and a little bit of that,
all mixed together in a poetry hat,
pull out nubile wordless, bash them all around,
organise the way they look, smell and sound.
Stir ‘em into shape, shake ‘em through and through,
let them have their say, they’ll tell you what to do.