"Won't it be strange when we're all fully grown" - 2000

hung on the door:

responsibility

ready to wear

The above, just my second ever attempted haiku (before learning of kireji and kigo), serves as a good marker for the new millennium. Were I a chemical reaction, it would describe the steady state I’d reached: seemingly always on the way to work, or returning lost in a book. Aware of the possibilities but rarely any extended time to spread out and work through the laborious process of handwriting draft upon draft. Yet that equilibrium was shifting in a way totally unforeseen. I refer to the acquisition of our first home PC, which brought with it the liberation of word processing. I didn’t fully recognise at first how radical its impact – not only as a new means of construction and publication, but also (once online) as a stimulus in its own right - would prove to be.

My approach changed almost overnight, and has never looked back. I was able to try new wordings and see the different versions alongside each other; I could experiment and still retrieve the original with ease; likewise lines could be reordered according to whatever whim prevailed; I could save and move text without limit. Such capabilities are assumed without a second thought nowadays; are so familiar, we forget the paper world of less than 15 years ago.

There wasn’t a shortage of material. All those fragments clamouring for attention had taken Jarvis Cocker’s exhortation to “meet up in the year 2000” literally. It was like being let loose at a rummage sale that had been several times postponed. So I began not only to compile, review and edit but also to gather and stitch. In terms of annual output, it’s unforeseeable that year 2K will be surpassed. Obviously, the resulting splurge was of uneven quality (and though this blog represents an archive, I shan’t be posting everything…) but it did generate some limited confidence to ‘go public’.

This became manifest in two ways: first, I began to inflict my best efforts on close friends; secondly, I sought both feedback and audience online. This search, reflecting my increasing awareness of poetry as a learnt craft, proved a mixed blessing. It was hard to find (and I assume still is) a forum that balanced sensitive support with constructive criticism. On the one hand, the simplistic mutual congratulation most prevalent offered no insight; on the other, the hierarchical, rules-bound, right-up-itself nature of some (such as the US based ‘Poetry Free-for-all’) was sterile. Periodically I did find the balance and outlet I was looking for at the Dublin Writers’ Workshop (Electric Acorn) and Bonfire. Now both sadly defunct.

And so my poetry moved decisively from being a reactive massage of the subconscious to a deliberate creative act. Execution remained primitive at this stage: I knew little of the craft skills, and am not blessed with a musical ear for rhythm & rhyme. What I did have was a fair sense of diction, coupled with a fascination for the precise meaning of words.

The weaving of disparate scraps reached its apogee with BEFORE THE WHEEL, a repository for images and feelings collected over several years. It has many flaws: an almost Gothic overuse of atmospheric adjectives (‘spectral’, ‘wan’, ‘lurid’, ‘bewitched’) coupled with dense, not to say obscure, allusion. (I’ve posted a comment to explain some of the imagery.) Nonetheless, in clearing and consolidating the past, it established a platform to from which to progress, and is thus a key poem.

Because by now I was beginning, in a fitful way, to learn about technique. The soundest and most influential advice came from my uncle, Tony Mortimer. He gave me four guiding criteria, which I have carried with me since: toughness, structure, economy, wit. Of these, more – I expect – in my next commentary.