Fiction Scribe

by DaveP
YouTube Digger
Pop Buzz UK

There are millions of people around the world who write poetry, me included. The reasons for writing are many and varied, but one thing shines through: poetry is based on personal experiences. The quandary I’m wrestling with at the moment is whether to keep my poems private or to be brave (read: stupid) and let others see them. Some people already get the pleasure (or pain) of reading my verse and cogitating over the meaning of them, but these are family and friends who will have some knowledge of where the origins of each particular poem come from.

People who I know and are in my inner circle can read my poetry and just take it in without giving criticism and telling me where I went wrong. Although some of them have an interest in writing and are poets themselves, they have a feel for where the poem’s heart is. Technical issues become less, and the meaning is more important. If an outsider who has no prior knowledge of me or my work read it, however, they are free to have an objective view on it, and so won’t fear picking up on any problems or mistakes within.

I have my own personal blog and two network blogs, so my writing skills are on show and open to interpretation and judgement on a daily basis. But poetry is somehow different, at least in my mind. There’s not an ounce of journalistic merit in them; it’s pure thoughts from my own head put on to paper. I write because I enjoy it, it gives me pleasure, and it helps organise my thoughts from a scrambled order in to a cohesive strand of words that I can go back to and read time and time again. But that’s a personal thing – not for public consumption.

I for one am under no illusions of grandeur that my poetry will ever get published via the traditional means, unless I have a sudden fit of egotistical madness and go the vanity route and pay for the pleasure myself. So the question I’m currently asking myself is, should I keep my poems in my notebooks and Word documents or start putting them somewhere more publicly accessible?

If you do publish on the internet, be it a personal site, or at places such as WritingForums.com and CreativePoems.com, will that maybe harm your chances of getting “properly” published in the future (if you harbour such wishes)? Would a potential real world agent be put off by the fact your work is already out there and being read by tens, hundreds or even thousands of people?

I like people reading my short stories, and I hope one day to have those novels which I work on but never seem to finish published one day. I also love having a blog and sharing my views on various aspects of the world and issues of the day, but poetry? That’s a whole other prospect indeed.

poetry, publishing, blogging, blog