Knowing Your Place

KNOWING
YOUR
PLACE

Poems by Ian Melville.

Poems of a career-long love of reading poetry, and an early retirement.

“These poems are not ‘the real I am‘, as my Mam used to say (though not about poetry). They are the poems of an early retirement, and as much artful autobiography as Art. I hope, though, that something of a career-long love of reading poetry has rubbed off on the life. Amateur poetry, then, with a little verse.

I hadn’t written poems since I was a student; I wrote these over a couple of years, and then stopped. As a hobby, writing poetry is creative and rewarding, but engaging with Art is different. Real artists need to make art, which involves a sort of quest: to discover what is intriguing them, and why, by exploring the possibilities of their medium, including its range of technical skills. This takes time – an ‘apprenticeship’, perhaps – and for a poet involves as much reading as writing. The journey’s end (and artist’s beginning), is sometimes referred to as the writer finding their own distinctive voice – ‘the real I am‘.

The work of many proper poets – artists – has enriched my life immeasurably, and I like to think of my poems as a form of gratitude to poets and poetry, along with those individuals named.”

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