Spirit Soul: Pursuance

On Sunday I settled down late morning to write a poem. It’s approaching the anniversary of my father’s death and I wanted to do something that would help with this. I was also keen to build on something I had already written. I took a poem from a collection of poems back in 1998 called ‘Brother Spirit Brother Soul’ and thought this would provide useful inspiration.

The poem had 24 lines, so I dropped each line at the top of a separate page. The intention was to write a poem for each of the lines. After I had written one I thought I’d try another. Well, without going into detail on the passage of time, 6 hours later I had written 24 poems, chosen a photo for the cover and had a booklet completed.

I may return to it to do some further editing of the poems, but for now here it is. I’ve sent it out to a few people for comment. I’ve never had such an intensive period of creativity before. It’s fascinating to look back at it now and see how the ideas ebbed and flowed as time passed. Pushing myself on with the experiment brought through ideas that wouldn’t have otherwise emerged. An interesting experiment, which I think I will repeat.

What did it teach me? Immense amounts of creativity come just one step at a time. Commit to small steps. Having 24 titles to work with created the instant stimulus to work from, which made the process of generating something new easier because there was already a starting point.

Anyway, feel free to download the pdf by clicking here and have a look at the book – “Spirit Soul: Pursuance”. You can also go to this page to find other pdf’s for download. I’d welcome feedback. I’m still unable to open up comments without being deluged with junk, so use the contact form.