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Sunday, January 11, 2015

Writing the Uncomfortable



Writing slams me against uncomfortable situations. Sometimes an image I want to use in a poem comes from a dark place inside me. I struggle with myself about whether to haul it to the light.

It is hard to write if I favor only the good parts, happy times, moments of delight. I need to honor the times in my life when things don't go well, the times of bitterness and anger, times when I feel lost.

Writing provides a path and a place to acknowledge my darkness, secrets, fears, anger and pain, to come to terms with them and let them go.

I can choose to share the writing or not. But the writing itself is a catalyst to release what needs to dissipate.

In order to write, to be a poet, I need to bring all of myself to the page, the dark and the light. Both are parts of me. 

Together they make me whole.

2 comments:

Jane Tims said...

Hi. I have a hard time writing about bad things that happen. Then I look at the writing I have done in the last while and find it has emerged in spite of me. For example, my Mom's death is something I have never written about. I think that and then I see that my poems are full of her picking berries, canning vegetables and so on. Jane

Carol Steel said...

I find that too, Jane. What needs to emerge will come whether we will it or not. We all share these human emotions and yet many feel they shouldn't find space in our poems. Life is about the bad times too. I'm sorry you lost your mother. What a wonderful way to memorialize her through your work!