This week I made the momentous (well, for me) decision to choose my next university course. It took some doing, some worrying about if I was making the right choice but in the end I chose and having had a night to sleep on it (or not sleep on it in my case) I think I made the right choice.
My decision was based not on career plans or what will look good on a CV or when discussed at gatherings over a beer etc. but on what would feed my poetry.
Seriously, I based a huge bill of thousands of pounds and the surefire entry into months of what looks like the toughest course I have yet undertaken on the conviction that it will feed my poetry.
Is it, you might ask, a literature course? Is it one dissecting the poetic works of others or teaching me how to write poetry? None of the above - that happened to some extent on my present course. It is one that is called, somewhat enigmatically 'Exploring Art and Visual Culture' and for this I have eschewed a course in literature that included the Beat poets! But wait, I am not completely mad. I know that I am inspired by medieval art, the Renaissance and everything up to the modern and I know that I will learn nuances that will creep into my work and for the rest.... the literature.... the poetry of Beat generations or otherwise, well I shall keep reading and perhaps take some extra course to fill that gap in the things that are the food of life to me.
So that is my next course and in the meanwhile, I shall pop up a jpg of a poem I'm currently working on as it is visual and although it was started before some recent news it seems like a portent of its coming. The news was that my mother died last week. It was posted to me on Facebook. The poem is about receiving benedictions after a death.
It's a strange world to be sure.
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