Remixing

Oh dear, I'm having another of those 'everything I write lately is mediocre' times. Which is perhaps a good thing, as I did plan to focus on revision this year. And I've embraced some tools I've given little attention to in the past, so as to not merely revise but remix.

I've suddenly fallen in love with things like the erasure and the cento, using my own poetry as source material, and sometimes coming up with what I think are improvements to the originals. My readers say kind things about them, so I could be right.

I like the way it puts a bit of mystery back into my poetry. After years of trying to acquire limpid clarity through practising haiku and the 'small stones' mindful writings, I think I'm in danger of achieving banality!

I look at my best friend Helen's poetry, with its masterful use of metaphor, and remember that I too used metaphor once upon a time. I seem to have lost that art along the way, but perhaps my current revision tools will give me equally interesting effects.

Interesting to me, I probably mean. I guess we have to remain interested in our own art in order to keep creating it with joy and passion, and that's why artists in all genres go through different phases or 'periods', abandoning their successes to try new things.

Anyway I recognise that for me, the only person I can really speak for, the process has always been where much of the fascination lies.