Words & poems
I wrote my first ever journal entry when I was four years old, and this is it in full (I’ll spare you my ALL CAPS printing): Today we went to the doctor. It is Monday November 6. I missed music school. I had a nap. We had lunch at Nana’s house. I threw up.
Not scintillating details or style, perhaps; but once I had started journalling, I never stopped for long. The assorted blank notebooks I have filled span a good four feet of bookshelf; over three decades later, I write in my journal more days than not. And while my formal training and my main work is in music, the written word has slowly been making its way into my career as well.
This began with the proofreading of music-related materials such as music history courses, concert programs, and album notes—I have an eagle eye for typos or spelling errors and an alarming appreciation of grammar—but by now I’ve edited or proofread everything from the manuscript of a book on how to enjoy poetry to music scores proper to my favourite magazine, FOLKLIFE.
And about two years ago, poems began to come to me. I phrase it this way at the risk of sounding airy-fairy, but I didn’t sit down and decide to start writing poems or decide that I was going to be a poet. I was going through a difficult period of my life, and I found that I needed to go to the woods as often as possible (meaning several times a week) simply to stay sane and functional. Those trips to the forest when I was in a very low place—that was when poems started to come to me, and probably a good three-quarters of my body of work at this point has been conceived in nature, which is also its primary theme.
You may rightly think me odd, but something else that has brought poems into being is the fact that I talk to myself a lot. This is particularly true when I’m in the woods. Sometimes while I’m chattering to myself about what I see or whatever pops into my mind, a certain few words or a turn of phrase or an idea will stand out to me, and this is almost always what becomes the seed of a poem. Curiosity and openness, I’ve found, are two significant keys to joy—probably in a lot of life, certainly in music, and apparently in writing as well.
I didn’t share any of my poetry for a year or more; it felt too new and raw, too frightening, and the inevitable imposter syndrome showed up whenever I thought about the possibility. I knew I would never be as good as my favourite poets (such as Mary Oliver and Elizabeth Bishop), and I had a vague feeling that I would never be a ‘good enough’ poet, full stop (whatever ‘good enough’ means). But the growth of the past few years has brought me to a certain new level of not caring what people think, and now I find that I enjoy sharing my poems with my local writers’ group, one or two friends, and various publications and contests, a few of which have accepted them for publication (and most of which haven’t). Because what’s the worst that could happen if I share my poetry? I want to read other people’s poems, so I’m appreciative when others are vulnerable enough to share them. And maybe, I hope, someone will be helped or feel less alone or find some joy by reading one of mine.
Within the musical world, I always knew that there was a place for everyone, no matter their level of commitment or ‘talent’. I’m not sure why I doubted that with poetry, but I’m trying not to doubt it any more. The poems, for their part, keep coming.