Poetry

Bestowing the moniker of poet upon yourself can seem lofty and presumptuous. I am not entirely sure it is appropriate in the sense most people would carry in their heads.

My venture into this realm started out purely through a love of playing with words. Ripping them apart, putting them into new combinations and general smashing them about with wreckless abandon.

I found that when experiencing writer’s block, actually writing about the writer’s block was a great way of wrong-footing the problem and causing words to flow. Poetry is the ideal medium for this.

In 2012, we tragically lost our beautiful daughter, Talia, to stillbirth. Everyone around me kept telling me, ‘There are no words.’

I appreciated the sentiment, but this seemed an awful poverty to be in. A place without words, as if we had tumbled off the edge of language and there was nothing left to say. In this dark and bleak time, this was the very moment that words were needed more than ever.

As a writer, I felt the burden falling to me to find the lost words.

As to whether any of this output warrants any title of poet, I will leave to others, but I hope something here will make you smile, shed a healing tear, or fall in love with words again.