A great many people seem to think writing poetry is worthwhile, even though it pays next to nothing and is not as widely read as it should be.
I published, privately, a collection of my serious poetry I had written over the years. I only published 50 copies, which I gave to friends, in a special deluxe edition. It was ridiculously expensive but I'm glad that I did it.
Well, the great thing for me about poetry is that in good poems the dislocation of words, that is to say, the distance between what they say they're saying and what they are actually saying is at its greatest.
Well, I had this little notion - I started writing when I was eleven, writing poetry. I was passionately addicted to it it was my great refuge through adolescence.
My next project is to get back to that. Actually, to learn how to write poetry. I'm not kidding.
Even the people who have had success and made money writing these books of fiction seem to feel the need to pretend it's no big deal, or part of a natural progression from poetry to fiction, but often it's really just about the money, the perceived prestige.
Humour is a fine line to walk in poetry, as in fiction. I just think it's harder to write. It's harder to keep the respect of the reader too.
I've often entertained paranoid suspicions about my fridge and what it's been doing to my poetry when I'm not looking, but I never even considered that my fan was thinking about me.
The poetry community here has been extraordinarily welcoming.
Then I discovered I loved writing poetry more than fiction.