Challenge accepted

The site is up and running — let’s show them what we’ve got.

Henry Austin Dobson kicks off the process

If someone were to inform me a year ago that I would be running a website, blogging, and posting every day on Instagram, I would have I cackled in their face and sought the nearest exit from the room! The last time I had written poetry was in my teens, I had stopped using Facebook, had never used twitter, and posted and grand total of 18 times in 5 years on Instagram — mainly pictures of cake.

I have summoned some Emily Dickinson to help me rise to the challenge

But something has changed, I have felt a compulsion not only to write, but to read through as many different poems as I could possibly set my eyes on. Somewhere in that process, the concept of Prontobard was born. Reading through well written, but lengthy narrative poems from the 18th and 19th century, I asked myself what if I could drag some of this dusty verse from the cobwebs of the internet and reinvent it for Instagram? Surely the content is a strong as anything poems being written today, what is missing is the presentation for a 21st century audience. So I have been busy reading through 100’s of different poets, in attempt to bring them to life again.

Is it all just a vanity project?

Yet, I have been filled with trepidation this week having finally gone live with the project. I am not deaf to the argument over the ‘respectability’ of instapoets in literary circles. Does this cheapen their work? I can’t honestly say for sure, but I have decided that this project should be about more than the posts themselves. I want to help preserve some the original poems and give them an accessible home for others to enjoy (hopefully encouraged to do so by my posts on social media).

There is one aspect of this process that has been quite unexpected. In order to research poets from all over the world, I have spent many, many hours trying to translate poems back and forth. I realise just how many poems are hidden from us by language. I hope to be able to bring some of these into the English language over time.

A reimagined poem by Helen Maria Williams

I have no idea how long this project will last. I have hundreds of ideas which I plan to share. For now, I am happy to turn these ideas into reality—that first step is always the hardest to make.

We artists make our own reality—

we dream a thing and it is so

James Whitcomb Riley

Well, that is my first blog/rambling done. Please leave a comment below with your thoughts, and thank you for reading!

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