Wandering the Words

It's been a strange week. I still can't get on my course that started last week due to technical issues. My whole application has been wiped from the system. I have no clue what's going on. I haven't had any teaching work this week, so I feel like I'm on hold. I had hoped to do some writing, but I only managed to work on finishing poems, nothing new.

I did get to visit a lot of people I haven't seen in months because of work which was lovely, but I just felt restless. I'm hoping this week will be better. I need to move with some purpose.

There's an American poet in my writing group, the first poet we've had besides myself in a while. Last week she read a poem and it was so American. I can't explain why, the strong rhythm, the long line breaks, the subject, I don't know.  I clumsily tried to explain to her after her reading that it was like being back in my creative writing classes in Idaho or out in nature there with my fellow Forestry students.

It's odd, I liked the reading style, but again I didn't. Like most of America, it doesn't fit me anymore, but it's familiar and slightly comforting. Maybe too much so, I knew that poem, that voice as soon as she started, it took me somewhere I'd been. It made me understand why I struggle to get accepted by American magazines, my poems don't sound like that, don't have that feeling anymore. I want to explore more, I don't want to go back on that mountain path I'd walked before.

I also listened to some poems by Angela Carr on her website. She has a little Sound Cloud box at the bottom on the right hand side. Her style of reading also felt familiar, but more what I heard in university in Scotland where I really got into writing. Treading familiar boards of long halls rather than walking in the woods. 

It was lovely to experience both again, I don't listen to enough poetry. I've visited the Poetry Foundation website several times and they often have audio of their poems, many times read by the poet. You can hear their way they read it, where they place the emphasis, hear their way of walking through their words. I need to wander back.