I've decided to do a Poetry Column for my local newspaper, St. Helena Star. I don't know how this journey will go but am willing to try and see how it goes. The premise of my column, "Love's Labours Found" (haha), is to present various experiences--from the mundane to the news--and from those experiences share the poems they inspired.
The limitations of teaching poetry has been known for a while. Poems are usually taught to be "about" something. If for instance, you experience something about a cat, the poem then would be about a cat. Such, anyway, is how I've seen journalism often cover poetry (when it does). And of course poems are about something but that POV, if over-emphasized, flattens the wonders of poem-making and poetry.
So I hope to present experiences, followed by poems that one might not have imagined they would inspire. Because as I say in my first column: "while a poem can have a specific inspiration, the poem also can be mischievous and/or transcend a poet’s initial intention."
My first column details a human interest story about my local vet adopting cats with special needs. But the poem itself deviates or expands from that experience, as exemplified by its title "Kintsugi," the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery. I don't wish my column to be didactic, so I hope just presenting the experience plus poem exemplifies without me saying explicitly that to make a poem is a journey without a map.
My first column came out today and I present the newspaper images beginning with the front page inaugural announcement. I can already see that the newspaper format will require certain adjustments. It doesn't accommodate broken lines well or stanza breaks and indents--not a problem, a poem is still possible within those constraints. But I'll present as the last image the way the poem is supposed to be with its correct stanza breaks and indents.
I hope you enjoy it. I do play to deploy humor often because that's a reliable way to interest non-poets into reading poems. Cheers!
