Thoughts on Poetry

You may or may not know this but I am part of a collaborative YouTube project called Writers on the Wall and I make a video every Tuesday, usually on a topic relating to writing or literature. This week's theme is poetry and I've been sitting at my computer for a while now thinking about what I'm going to say in this video. It's hard to decide because there's so much to be said on the subject of poetry. The thing is with poetry is that it is an art of many aspects and poetry can mean many different things, depending on the person and how they view it. This got me thinking; is there actually any dictionary definition of the word poetry? I searched in to Google the term "poetry definiton" and this is the first one I found:

Poetry is an imaginative awareness expressed through meaning, sound and rhythmic language choices so as to evoke an emotional response. Poetry has been known to employ meter and rhyme, but this is by no means necessary. Poetry is an ancient form that has gone through numerous and drastic reinvention over time. The very nature of poetry as an authentic mode of expression makes it nearly impossible to define. 


For the purposes of this blog post I am going to ignore the fact that the above definition is rather wordy, fairly muddled and hardly a definition at all and focus on the last sentence. The very nature of poetry as an authentic mode of expression makes it nearly impossible to define. This sentence, for me, sums up my thoughts on poetry almost perfectly. it is not something you can out you finger on easily and it relies so much on personal taste that poetry has become something that only exists in the eyes of the beholder.

For me personally; I think poetry is it's most beautiful when accompanied by something else. I've never been a great fan of poetry books with individual poems that stand alone, that type of poetry has never really appealed to me; but poetry alongside music, art or as part of a novel has often taken my breathe away. Some people say that music says what words cannot and some say art does this too, but I disagree with this to an extent. I think that if you combine art or music with poetry you create something that speaks louder than anything else in the world. Of course I think a novel is capable of doing this too, especially when containing certain aspects of poetry but this is because novels are long and can contain so many words. Songs usually contain very few words but the music alongside these words allows the song to express just as much as an entire novel does. I find this amazing.

I don't know what I'm going to say in this video but maybe it's a bad idea to delve in to the true essence of poetry in the way I have just done in this blog post. It is slightly dry and probably boring. Instead, in my video, I will demonstrate the true essence of poetry.


Now I just need a poem to use...

Sunrises

Hello everyone! I decided that,  instead of writing, today I would share with you some of my "photography" of sunrises. 

I have quite a few more but these are some of my favorites. Enjoy :)

BEDA (minus day one)

This year I have decided, a little late, to do BEDA. In case you don't already know what BEDA is; it stands for Blog Every Day in April, although it can also be called Blog Every Day in August. It works for both months. Unfortunately, due to the craziness of being in my school drama production and all sorts of other things, I failed to notice it was April 1st yesterday so I'm starting BEDA a day late. I'm mainly doing this impulsively but I also think it will be a nice way to get me writing, getting more comfortable with the style of blog writing and I think it will be a really cool month to look back on in the form of blog posts.

Hmm...now I need some content for this post...

List of things that come to my mind

1. I just checked the comments on my latest writersonthewall video (a youtube collaboration project) and saw that the video, which took the least effort out of all my WOTW videos, got one of the best responses out of all of my videos on that channel. Weird huh? Apparently people like to watch disorganised teenage girls struggle for words whilst fiddling with ties and lone shoes on their bedroom floor.

2. I went in to town earlier with a couple of friends to find mother's day gifts for tomorrow and, more than anything, the trip made me appreciate how nice the weather is currently and how much I hate card shops. I'm not going to go in to it but you know what I mean...Commercialised, overpriced crap.

3. I think I mentioned on my blog that I've given up chocolate for lent. Last night I ACCIDENTALLY ate three chocolate fingers. Don't judge me, it wasn't my fault. It was at the after show party at my school and it was late, I was tired, I was excited and I was offered some freaking chocolate fingers. I only realised three hours later what I'd done and I was pretty peed off. But I'm going to continue not eating chocolate anyway because I'm NOT a quitter. Awkward pause. Anyway, I'm proud to say I haven't intentionally eaten any chocolate this lent so far so it's all good.