How to Become a #Writer Even if you Can’t be Bothered to Write

At the end of the twentieth century I was a performance poet – known as Agent Peggy Pegworth. This meant that I spent much of my time drinking wine and gigging in function rooms above pubs all over London. I met lots of great poets and even formed a sort of ‘poet band’ called The Radge Poets. If you don’t have time to write, then poetry could be the solution you are looking for. One of my favourite performance poets on the ‘scene’ back then was Paul Birtill:

“A kind of anti-Laureate who makes Philip Larkin sound life affirming” Robert Lloyd Parry, Ham & High

Paul describes perfectly the benefits of becoming a poet in this poem:

Work-Shy Writer

You get lazy people
in any field, I write poems
instead of novels. You start
at nine and finish at half
past and have the rest of
the day to yourself. Money’s
crap though.

Paul Birtill, 1998
Terrifying Ordeal: Poems

The crap salary did not deter Paul, who writes plays as well as verse and has had several poetry collections published.

However, I eventually retired from performance poetry due to recurrring bouts of stage fright and a lack of dependable income. (I became a hypnotherapist instead.)

But today is World Poetry Day, recognising “the unique ability of poetry to capture the creative spirit of the human mind.” If you’ve ever found yourself saying “I don’t have time to write!” then poetry could be for you. It doesn’t have to take up much of your time. Radge Poet Ian Allsopp once wrote this little gem:

Do One Word Poems Work?

Yes.

I’ve made a short film of me performing one of my old poems to show you how easy it can be.

A poet finds delight

In the empty sky at night

The stars don’t shine they glitter

The birds don’t sing they twitter

 

The sun don’t beam it radiates

The rain don’t rain it contemplates

The worms that wriggle

When bluebells giggle

And rinses out our yesterdays

To make room for tomorrow

 

The city’s a hive of activity

Of multicultural intensity

And humans contain astounding extremes

Of venomous lies and heavenly dreams

 

These are fractions of fiction and things still unwritten

And writings a bug that has to be bitten

If you can never completely describe it, you know it

You know you are thinking a bit like a poet!

Check out more of my poems on the international community PoetrySoup

(You may also like: I Don’t Have Time To Write – Time Taming Tips for Writers, Bloggers & Infopreneurs)

Check out my book: The Theakletuffin Poem – A Peculiar Fairytale (Not for Children)

Now it’s your turn. Can you write a really tiny poem, right now? Leave me a comment below.