Welcome to my Poet Lady Chat Room. I would like to invite you to click on the chat box and type in a question, a suggestion, submit a poem, in other words – “chat with me.” I may, if you submit a poem, decide to feature it in my Poem of the Week section or, we may simply exchange ideas and suggestions about your poem.
This is a place to “talk” poetry with someone who has loved it all her life. I have a true passion for the possibilities of poetry and would love to hear your thoughts and/or read your poem. I will be happy to offer my reaction to your work and, based on over 40 years of teaching poetry, organizing, and conducting poetry workshops, working as a book review editor for an international poetry magazine, authoring five books of poetry and two textbooks on teaching poetry, send along my thoughts on ways to make your poem stronger and more impactful.
If you’re on my site, you have a connection to poetry. Feel free to connect with me – right here -right now, by typing your message into the “chat box” and clicking send. I’m waiting…
Your friend in poetry, Susan
FEATURED POEM
It's been a while since I wrote something which left me deeply invested. I've been a little too critical on myself lately as further i grow with my self imposed title of 'writer', i feel this pressure upon myself to write better and tbh I'm still figuring out my definition of 'better'; to be able to intricately weave threads of metaphor between lines would be called better enough or cleverly design imageries which only mind's eye can pixelate is what makes someone's writing better ? Or perhaps it's completely subjective as others view it with their varied rose tinted or blurry chipped glasses.
Or maybe how wickedly a write up strips the writer's heart naked- might be called worthy enough and i think that's the scariest part. Holding your deepest vulnerabilities bare to not just be read explicitly but sliced and torn into judgments and interpretations. I think the latter part is what makes a tremendous difference between who gets to stand under the spotlight and who behind the suburbs and after consistently writing for more than 2 years, I've oscillated numerous times between both the phases.
Lately i think it's more to do w my choice of how much I'm willing to allow my writings to reflect me at the edges of each sentence i carve down. It's something i don't have control over tbh for my ink bleeds out of rhythm of how i want creativity to flow through my veins till my fingertips. When you're in your element, you're beyond the bournes of time and space which is unexpressable to a normal being. True artists know that creating art is nothing but a meditative trance and the artist itself doesn't know what they'll end up creating as they disconnect themselves from their reality in the process.
Writing for me has been nothing less than lucid dreaming. I get to paint a canvas full of colours beyond the visible spectrum, there's infinite possibility and idk how it works and why it works for who'd even care to ponder over something unfathomable rather than to play the instruments of miracles which art allows us to tune into and groove along its beats. You'd never know what's the next rhythm, you simply dance along the wavelength submerging into ocean of ecstacy. Oh dear it's no less than getting high and letting your gaurds down. I believe that's how legacy is left behind.
After contemplating enough that how i don't have much control over what my pen blots on paper, I'm scared what I'd come face to face with. Will it be my own scars staring deep into my soul or a sweet lullaby in disguise of the horrors of 3 am nightmares I've been fighting till my lungs gasp for it's last breaths? What will I do if my demons arise high as i lay crippled or if the world gets to know about the immortal storm brewing under my skin as i walk calmly down the streets being pretentious how everything's fine?