Sunday 16 February 2020

IAN MARTIN : part four

Has your consideration of poetry changed since you began?

I think I used to see poetry as a solitary pursuit, as romantic, as depressing, as all-encompassing. Now I just think of it as something nice that I like to do and share. It’s a way to connect with people and that’s the most important thing to me now. I used to be a lot more standoffish. I didn’t want people to understand me. I wanted to be special and important. Poetry is cool but it’s not the only thing. You can do other stuff and just hang out.

I think also my view on what poetry can be has changed a lot. I think I used to have a really narrow view of what was “good” or “correct” in poetry but now I care a lot less. There’s lots of ways to write a poem and when I think too much about what a poem “should” be and try to make my poems look or behave a certain way, it invariably turns to crap. It’s too rigid for me.

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