The Journey is The Destination: My Poetic Journey
I was in the university when I wrote my first line. I had just had a class on poetry and it had appealed to me; the ability to bend words, give it life, give it new meaning, create sounds, and make it sing, was something that reached me somewhere inside the twisted strings of purposelessness that was all of me at that time.
I loved Lord Byron’s Don Juan. The character was a knave of the best pedigree. He was a Don Quixote with more venom and a Casanova with more character. I also loved the interior monologue, Byron embedded throughout the poem. My eyes, full of love, I wrote poetry in Byron’s shadow. That collection of poems is lost in the mists of time.
My next epiphany came when I learnt of free verse. I could write without thought to rhyme, number of lines, structure, meter, and all the rules of poetry that made it difficult to write? Wow! I was ready. I picked my pen and I wrote. All that came out was bad prose in stanzas; I loved it.
One evening, after several drinks with a buddy of mine, I left for my lodge with a girl, I barely knew. This was my first year in the university, I was still a naive 19 years old boy, who had just left a secluded estate in a small town for the first time in his life. She took me home, took off my clothes and made love to me, while I was passed out on my bed. When I woke up the next morning, I was scared; I thought I had contacted one STD or something worse and that I was going to die. This was a very depressing time in my life and I found solace in writing poetry. Thus, my ranting stage in my poetic evolution began. Those rants are knocking about on the backs of old school notes somewhere in my father’s old sitting room shelf. I think I copied some into my hard drive a while back.
In that time, I ranted on pain, sex and drugs. I was high on weed almost every day. I went to lectures high, came back home and got high. I rarely ate; just smoked pot, played Eminem Show on repeat (it is a classic now but then it fed my angst) and wrote rants. Now I didn’t know it was rants, I thought it was how free verse is supposed to be. I prided myself at never needing to edit any of my work. I left it on the page, bleeding raw and ugly. I wrote some lines that fell into the realm of love-hate themes but my writing then was personal and till date I have not been able to share that body of work with the public.
Towards the end of my university life, I had the opportunity of attending a creative writing class and once again, my writing evolved. I stopped the introspection and started looking around me for inspiration. I was still getting high and I had moved on to the Encore and the Curtain Call Albums and thanks to Wole Soyinka, I now had big words peppering my rants. That awesome lecturer in the class opened my eyes to a different world, made us write and I wrote.
Poetry came to me for the first time, as a way to speak to the people around me. There were so many things I wanted to say about me, about my society, about my beliefs that I could not say. Maybe because I am a lazy writer (that is why I can’t seem to complete any work of prose I put my hands into), but I know the major reason is that I am quite shy with strangers. I actually had to drop the position of class representative due to my inability to face the class and speak. Anyhow, I wrote a piece and edited it and presented it to a lecturer whom I respect. He looked at it and told me I had potential. What! I mentally moon-walked out of his office. Validation is the sweetest thing; nothing feels as sweet as someone going through your efforts and seeing something worth praising there. That singular approval made me take poetry serious. It moved from a form of therapy and release to a passion. I bought a diary and transferred all my poems which I felt were worth reading into it.
I was finally ready to share my poetry or so I thought. The first person to read my poems was a friend of my roommate’s girlfriend. She laid on the rug in our room and devoured the book. When she was done she said, I was awesome; I glowed… I wrote a verse and posted on my department’s notice board. My course mates were surprised that I could write so well. People were calling me and telling me to go for one poetry reading contest or the other but I declined; the mic scared me and it still scares me till date. On a side note, I misplaced the diary and lost most of the poems I wrote in that period. I managed to scrounge up some of them by going back to the original copy; back of notebooks, back of handouts, pieces of paper, etc.
One day, after several years and many more amateur poems lost now to posterity, I thought to myself – why not share your poems on Facebook? It took great effort to come to this decision. First of all, I was still afraid of rejection, secondly, I worried about plagiarism and intellectual theft. I got my around this by posting poems on Facebook which I typed on my Facebook wall. I didn’t edit these poems, I just posted them, knowing they could be used by anyone without my knowledge. In fact, someone actually re-posted my poem, claiming the poem to be his work. I sorted it out though. Now I endeavor to put my name, the year and the copyright logo at the bottom of any poem I post on Facebook. I know it is not enough to deter some folks but it will have to do for now. Sorry, I have digressed from my tale.
Anyways, I had just gotten my first laptop and a modem for internet connection was available, so I thought to myself; what the hell, and posted a verse. You should see the comments and likes I got. I was amazed – so I am this good? Wow! I started posting more, joining poetry groups and pages and I even opened a poetry group of my own. Oh Yes, I was having fun.
One day, I noticed a young man posting on an Alumni group on Facebook about his writing being published on a website and I contacted him immediately. We got to chatting and he told me to submit to different places and I might get published too. I immediately went to my collection and behold I could find nothing worth submitting. You see, in the different groups I had joined, I had come across poetry, written so beautifully in free verse. My work was still rough, I still refused to edit, leaving my work as raw as it had stepped out of my brain to paper.
I knew I needed a new body of work. So I started writing again. This was after several years of writer’s block, disinterest and simply…living. I now knew more about manipulating words than I did before, so I put pen to paper, as the saying goes. What I had was new material that I still didn’t like. I also realized that those poems that people had responded favorably to on Facebook were not necessarily what the journals, blogs and websites were looking for. I became disenchanted and stopped submitting my work.
I launched my own blog and posted my poems on it. I did this thinking it was a solution to my fears on plagiarism as well as a means of making money from writing. I got a following but it was not what I had thought it would be, besides my reasons for curating that blog were not artistic. So after several posts, I quit posting my poems there. The poems of this period in my writing life were more or less portraits. If I am asked what is poetry? My answer will be; It is the painting of pictures with simple words that sing and also tells the story of the world to one and to all. The problem with my writing at this time was, my poems had no messages neither did they sing. I was just painting. These set of poems; I try not to think of. Like my rants, they are gathering dust somewhere.
Well, after several years, I suddenly realized that I have not submitted to a Nigerian blog before. I did some research and found one. I typed the poem on my phone and sent it to the blog. I was not expecting an acceptance, I tell you. So I was dumbfounded when I got a mail, asking me to confirm that the poem had not been published elsewhere as it had been accepted….What! I screamed ‘Yes!’ inside my room. Finally, Validation! That poem, Greetings, Ile Ife published by Brittle Paper, fed life into my sense of esteem. I was finally doing it right. Since then, my work has appeared in several literary journals and websites both in Nigeria and outside the shores of my country, on a chapbook anthology and I have won a competition. I even got a writing gig for a blog through contacts I made from posting my poems online.
In the midst of this, I discovered an app that allows me combine my words with pictures and after posting on the app, I could link it to Instagram, Facebook and the likes. I had great reviews from that also but I later stopped when my phone went bad. When I get another phone, I will go back to it. I feel it is beautiful; combining words with pictures. I even have a business idea based on this but that is for another day.
What have I learnt so far on this my unplanned trip into writing poetry? I have learnt that, poetry is first and foremost about you. Who are you? How do you see the world? What do you want to tell the people around you? Where do you hurt? Poetry is a way of life; of seeing the world and reacting to it. Who you are determines what you write about and how you go about writing it.
My advice to those of you like me, who are yet to find their voice, yet to get validation or yet to write the first line, is go on and write. Never stop writing whether or not people get you or not. Remember it is personal. It is a relationship between your thoughts, your feelings, your experiences and the world. Take care of your words, polish them, wear them beautiful clothes or paint them in gory colours but never leave them drab.
Post your stuff on Steemit (This I greatly recommend), Facebook groups and pages, Instagram, etc. get feedback and improve. Experiment with words; poetic license is not the license to be crude but it is the license to improve how we communicate. Use that. Interact with other poets…networking is key. They always have valuable advice; I can attest to that.
Read poetry. Most poems are read by poets. It is the sad reality of being a poet; we are not as lucky as prose writers. This will show you what is missing in your own writing. Also you tend to find that what you considered to be unique about your writing is being done by another poet and he or she is doing it better than you. Also read literary journals, so you are abreast with what is going on in the world of nerds.
You will get rejections; in fact, expect rejections but do not be dejected by it. I have several rejection letters on my email as well as on my Submittable account. It hurts, I know but it makes the acceptance even sweeter. So persist, rework the poem or dump it if you can’t amend it but never stop submitting, you never know…. Another thing you should also try is posting to blogs where you are given a short time to write about a theme or an image. This will help you get used to being creative on the fly. Again I emphasize, never stop writing and never stop submitting.
Have I found my voice, my sound, my stage and my audience? It’s an ongoing process. I am still working on it. I feel that I will still evolve and the day I stop evolving in my writing process, that day, my poetry will die. Along the way though, I intend to enjoy it all. The Journey is the destination.
I am yet to see how Steemit pans out but I believe it will be an awesome experience. If i can get so much with the normal social media platforms, imagine what i can achieve on an exceptional platform like this. Writing is a beautiful art and Steemit has given us the perfect platform to polish and sell our art. Let’s not waste it.
Peace,
Oskilo @Warpedpoetic.
Photo Credit:
www.vidyavikasacademy.edu.in
www.wrr.ng