Dreadful week. Stones and blood come to mind. And I realise now that athough I thought I was afraid of the the creative void - nothing emerging, just that heavy, silent space - the truth of the matter is that I’m greedy. Greedy for creative engagement. Greedy for that feeling which honestly is almost better than being in love. And it won’t be summoned. It just won’t. I know I’ve written about this before, but creativity is cyclical. Like the circle of life in The Lion King. Like the fallow and fertile seasons, the time to plant, the time to reap, the time to rest and germinate and other such platitudes. But you get my drift.

 

So I am trying to remain open and optimistic, wondering where the next poem will come from, and you know, deep down I kind of know it will come from somewhere, sometime. I’ve been doing this for long enough to believe that faith is an important ingredient.

 

And talking of faith, I can’t let this week go by without mentioning the nightmare that is Gaza. I don’t want to add anything to the words that are slewing around the internet and yet I feel bound just to mention this amid my self-obsessed ramblings. I find my atheism just grows stronger, my conviction that religion is the root of much of the world’s evil and that there is no god. Maybe that’s why I’m so stuck with my poetry at the moment. I can’t get past those images that are clogging my mind and I don’t dare to write about them either.

 

Nevertheless, it’s been a weekend of family activities, parties and celebrations of various sorts, but I escaped it all last night to go to the Poetry world’s annual schmooze-fest, the TS Eliot readings. More berets than you’ve ever seen before in the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Ten fine and varied poets reading for one of the top poetry awards. How inspirational,  how cheering, how open to possibility poetry suddenly becomes. Yes, anything is possible. What a cornucopia of talent, and only eight minutes of each poet, so really no time to get bored. I met at least 2800 people I knew. Whoops, I mean 28, and poet-spotting was fun too. I feel cheered and almost inspired and will see what the week brings now that Xmas is safely out of the way and my routine is re-establishing itself.