It’s been a full on crazy few months (let’s face it…year), with lots of travel, lots of promoting, lots of “serious” writing, too. But I have to be honest with you.  I’m struggling a bit with my poetry, lately.  Yes, I have been writing and revising and revising again. But everything feels a little too much like pulling teeth. Everything seems so serious, too much like “will this be good enough?” instead of the more important “will this be?”  Every now and again I think to myself, “Loosen up. Have some fun. Do something different for a change.” I have even started to make a list of word games and new approaches to writing that I can try.  That in itself is symptomatic of my problem, don’t you think? Instead of just getting on with it, I’m making lists to remind myself to get on with it. Ugh. What happened to fun?  What happened to my sense of play?

My good friend, who just happens to be one of my favourite writers, Tania Hershman, wrote a quick and simple blog post yesterday called Playing With My Words. It intrigued me so. She does the old cut and paste trick, which I’ve seen before and have always been meaning to try.  David Bowie has done the same thing to make some of his song lyrics. The idea is to find or think of interesting phrases or words or clauses — whatever — cut them up, mess them around and see what you get. It sounds like fun. And her new collection of flash fiction, My Mother Was an Upright Piano — well, the title itself is enough to show you what I mean about how free and spontaneous she is with her work.

A second good friend and fave writer, Sarah Salway, is another one who never seems to lose her sense of play. Reading through her new poetry collection, You Do Not Need Another Self-Help Book, I saw lots of poems that looked like fun to try. I even put little ticks next to them in the Table of Contents.

But always, when I think of doing these things, I stop myself and think, “This can’t be work, can it? Can anything really come of it? Can a poem?” And I guess that’s my point.  STOP IT, SUE!!! Nothing will come out of anything if I lose that sense of fun, that childlike ability to go wow!

You know, it’s my birthday next week. Maybe it’s time to grow down.