A Poet?

Me and Poetry

Before Vocal I wrote very little poetry, most of it was free form and did not stick to formal structures. I only published on my blog and then that was it. I am not sure how many people saw my work and whether most of it was just robots but I was glad that I could just get the words down on Seven Days In via my keyboard, knowing that as long as there is power and the internet my words will always be there if people look for them, though coming across them might be just by luck rather than judgement.

Starting On Vocal

When I started on Vocal I wasn’t too sure what I was doing and revamped some of my Seven Days In posts and then wrote about my early Vocal experiences. One of the things I liked was there was moderation and you had to write at least six hundred words before your story gets published. Obviously on Seven Days In I could write as few words as I wanted and there was zero quality control because I had complete control over everything.

Discovering Vocal Poetry

There was a Vocal Challenge asking for a Summer Sonnet, which you can see here, and I have included my poem below. I wondered if I could do this so I read up one what the format of a sonnet was and put some words together and entered. Of course I didn’t win, but people enjoyed it and I had written a poem that had been accepted.

Another thing I discovered was that there was a hundred word limit for poems, although give the extreme shortness of some poems, for instance a Haiku or a Cinquain, there is no way to hit the hundred words with your poem so you have to write some preamble to explain about the poem and this will bring your total story up to the required number of words.

I got a lot of encouraging and loving reactions to my poetry from the Vocal Facebook groups and gained inspiration to write and share more poetry, more than two hundred and twenty at this moment in time.

My First Vocal Top Story

I met inspirational people on Vocal and have written many poems for and inspired by her but the poem below was my first Vocal Top Story. This was inspired by something that Colleen Milsteed shared, the Nic Jones song “Canadee-I-O” and a few Vocal friends. When it got a Vocal Top Story I thought I had arrived and had been recognised by Vocal.

That was eight months ago and I have not had a Top Story for a poem since then. I have written far better poems but while they are loved by Vocal friends on Facebook they are not on Vocal’s radar.

I Know I Am Good but Vocal Can’t See That

That is how I feel. There is nothing I can do about it apart from keep writing excellent poetry. At first I thought it was because poetry seldom featured as Top Stories but I have many friends who have regular Top Stories for poetry, plus others who seem to get a top Story for everything they produce.

This does trigger “Imposter Syndrome” in myself, but I do get continual encouragement from my Vocal friends and Colleagues and that always builds me up. Their encouragement sweeps away the Vocal ignorance and keeps me writing my poetry knowing that it is really being appreciated.

A Poetic Conclusion

You can expect a lot more poems to flow from my fingers and keyboard in the future.