Staying Within Your Limits

Day 195 - 07:59am, 15 July 2019

I spent tonight writing a poem for a competition to win a place on a creative writing workshop at the Edinburgh Book Festival. There is a fifty word limit, that's not a lot, and I have never been good at brevity. Not when it comes to words, anyway. I like to take great circular sweeps at my subject until I find my groove. Admittedly this means I tend to over-write, but then I enjoy the subsequent challenge of pairing it back and polishing it into something I can hopefully be proud of. Anyway, for better or worse, this is where my fifty words took me.

"On the Page"

It's said without ears to hear it,

A falling tree makes 

No sound, only vibrations.

Unless eyes are trained on it,

Poetry makes no sense, 

Existing, if at all, as marks.

So, who's the poet, if it's because
Of your lack of perception
That this poem ceases to be?