Poetry

Yesterday I attended a launch of a collection of poetry. The poet, Tru Dowling,  asked me to read one of her poems at the launch.

I got to thinking about what attracts a person to a poem, a novel or a work of art. I think that it is often the resonance of a personal experience or emotion that draws a person to a  particular work.

The poem I chose to read  yesterday was Tru Dowling's Childess, a poem of intense loss but which contains within it the seed of hope.


Through  the poem's refrain I could hear the sound of a heart beat, the promise of new life and the potentiality of the future.

What the poem said to me was that sometimes you have to totally stuff in life to find your way, but the most important thing is to never, ever, give up.

I thought of the words of the poet Walt Whitman:
Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost,
No birth, identity, form — no object of the world.
(Continuities)

Well done, Tru, for a fantastic collection - Memoirs of a Consenting Victim.