Poetry, poets quickly learn is an arbitrated space.

Editors in general have almost no information about who is submitting to their open submission windows and contributors are in a not dissimilar position.  It’s a disorientating, even macabre merry-go-round I set aside for just short of two decades as an act of rebellion at having my expectations of poets and the behaviour of poets disjointed by a sharper dose of reality.

Disproportionate over-reaction? Definitely. 

Other than the rather freaky forms of poetry I was writing at the time, what has changed is accepting once inside you, poetry quickly establishes itself and never really leaves.  Whilst it’s more wilful aspect, sticking around and making sense of things, (and concurrently at the same time, trying to make sense out of us) produces degrees of entanglement, accepting this turned out to be the least conflicted option for me.

Becoming a writer again, I’ve been a poetry title for Human Books. The concept is ‘readers’ can book out your title, (mine being poetry-related) to ‘read’ for half-an-hour. Soon I was to learn how pivotal my Human Book ‘readers’ were to a successful experience of what poetry is beyond the subject matter of the ‘book’ title.

My rejection of poetry and underlying reasons were not specific to anyone else. Outside of core relationships, we are not synchronistic to the thread of one another’s lives yet under the surface and in wider situations we remotely work away at each others problems   My first ever Human Book reader arrived full of enthusiasm for poetry with an impressively attached entire sunflower pinned to her hair but the most iconic entered the yurt carrying a talking stick. Once propped into a comfortable position on a cushion and being told this was an utterly essential item for any sojourner, we began our session.

My ‘reader’ in this instance, had dedicated themselves to a journey by means of important conversations. Countries visited or which he intended to visit were enthusiastically anticipated, but concluding this adventure, the talking stick would be given over as a keepsake to the person sharing with him, one last memorable conversation.

Discovering poetry is a step towards discovering the poet. Whilst editors are making arbitrated choices, poetry is operational in ways none of us can reliably access, a talking stick we carry from one important conversation to the next.