Tuesday 17 August 2021

Damien B. Donnelly : part three

What do you feel poetry can accomplish that other forms can’t?

Poetry, for me, gets to the essential quicker than any other form of writing. I'm currently working on a fictional novel and have written many short stories but the excitement of poetry, its uniqueness and also perhaps its greatest challenge, is to cut away all that is decoration and retain only that which is necessary. I'm a big musical theatre fan and know that some people question why they have to sing in the middle of a Play but, for me, the singing comes because simply speaking is not enough to convey the emotion, singing takes it to another level, accompanied by the music. Poetry, in a similar sense, is an extension of prose, a way of catching the light, of drawing attention, of saying look at me, both my beauty and my fragility, the shimmering way the words flow when contrasted against how few words there are to protect. A poem stands naked on a stage, there is no cover up, it simply is. We may not always understand it but it's definitely hard to ignore it.

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