Working through headaches;
the blacksmith at the anvil
hammers intensely.
Why write poetry?
Up until a year ago, I had spent most of my adult life oblivious to the poetry world; busy with work, children, and creating a place to call home. I had started to burn out a few years ago, struggling with both mental and physical health. However, it wasn't until I heard my grandmother's recital of Padraic Colum's 'An old woman of the roads' that I realised the power and potential in poetry to guide, heal and teach. At the age of 99, and suffering from dementia, she recited the poem perfectly word for word. This is despite no-one, even my father, ever hearing her recite it before. How could a poem have such an impact? The answer I think lies in her childhood. She was the eldest in her family, and witnessed both her parents pass away by the age of sixteen. She also lost her 4 year old brother to illness in-between. She would have learnt this poem at school around the time. I could only imagine the worry she had about keeping her siblings safe and together, and to ensure that they had a home to live in. Three months after her 99th birthday, my grandmother passed away. In memory of her passing, I decided to take up poetry to tackle some of my own feelings and issues. I fell in love with the process, and have since tried to expand what I write about. Prontobard came about as part of my drive to read more poetry. I realised that despite the huge volume of poems available on the internet, there are still so many poets and poems that have been (almost) forgotten, and I wished to give some of them a new lease of life. In the process, I have discovered many forms of poetry, and even tried to develop some of my own. In particular, I have come up with the idea of 'enclosed phrase' poems, or Kakoiku (囲句) - which I believe might be a way to make formal poetry more accessible to modern platforms like Instagram. I hope you can enjoy the poems I add here, please let me know what you think.