What does a person who writes poems do when they are not writing poems? Do they sink into the Slough of Despond, pretty sure they will never write again? Do they stop carrying the notebook everywhere and hide it in a drawer? Do they slink around hoping nobody will identify them as A Poet, because of course they are not. Not any more. Not since they wrote that one thing six months ago. And that wasn't even very good. So it's probably all over now.
I've gone down all these roads. But ultimately none of them were very scenic, and it all felt really crappy, which detracted somewhat unnecessarily from the sweet heady rush of writing poems. So I quite long ago decided that the way to deal with the not-writing-poetry times was to celebrate them as necessary. I think of them as my mulch time. Whatever is happening in the limbic swamp of my brain, it generally gives rise to some poems that are more formed, more thoughtful, and more full of soul and experience than anything that has gone before. So there's that.
While the notebook sits unopened in the drawer for months, I live my life. As Patrick Watson so wisely sang "Getting tired of wasting worries/I'm gonna let the worries worry for themselves for a change." It's the chewiness of events that affords me the material for the next work. One day, I'll read some old diary, or a great essay or piece of journalism, and the notebook will come out and a few lines will be jotted down and it will all start to feel hopeful and wide open again. Lines will start to come into my head when I'm driving and I'll have to pull over. Or during the night. Notebook by the bed again. Lines building on lines, themes emerging, something new I may never have written about before. All the mulch making good green shoots. Excitement, like Spring.
It so happens that day was today. I was looking in my diary of 1995 for a photo I knew I had stuck there. Started reading about the first days of my first marriage. Scraps of poetry in the entries. Out came the notebook. Now it will be going everywhere with me again. Wallet, phone, keys, poetry notes.
