A belated introduction

[BuckMulligan]

Hi, I've only recently begun to write poetry. So far, almost all of it is very bad, but I think I'm slowly getting a little better.

I also enjoy reading poetry, and just wanted a place where I could both get feedback and feed back in turn. I looked around a bit and this place was by far the most attractive forum for it; it just seemed rather more grown-up than the other places. Or perhaps it was the .co.uk that attracted me.

It's nice to meet you all.

[Ros]

A rhyming sonnet with meter isn't bad for a beginning! Glad to have you here.

Ros

[Nash]

Hello Buck,

Welcome aboard, glad to have you here. We are quite a grown-up bunch I think, with juvenile tendencies on occasion.

Any poetic preferences in your reading?

All the best,
Nash.

[BuckMulligan]

Hi Ros and Nash.

A rhyming sonnet with meter isn't bad for a beginning! Glad to have you here.

Thanks very much -- at the moment, I find it quite difficult not to write without some sort of formal constraint. Sometimes it's metrical, sometimes it's rhyme, often it's both. I don't know if this'll change. The disadvantage, as you've already noted, is that the poems can end up extremely trite or forced, and indeed often they do. It's good practice and good fun though.

Any poetic preferences in your reading?

Unsurprisingly I suppose, I love Shakespeare and Donne - and Herbert's good fun as well. I like aspects of the Romantics, though I find it very difficult to read Wordsworth and Coleridge for pleasure. Byron's great fun, though, and Keats is excellent. Tennyson and Hopkins are almost the only Victorian poets I actually enjoy reading, unfortunately. Moving into the 20th Century, I love Eliot, Auden, Larkin, Walcott, Heaney and Simon Armitage isn't half bad either. Geoffrey Hill, when I can understand him (rarely), is just fantastic.

My tendencies are definitely on the "dead white male" side of things (for poetry - I'm a bit less stuffy with novelists), but I'm always seeking to widen my reading. Those are just the poets that I read most willingly. Part of the reason I signed up here was because I wanted to read new stuff.

[Ros]

We do have our share of dead white males here <ducks...> but the rest of us are pretty lively!

Ros

[k-j]

I find it very difficult to read Wordsworth and Coleridge for pleasure. Byron's great fun, though, and Keats is excellent.

QFW, as they say on the internets.

[David]

Nice to meet you too.

Cheers

David

[Antcliff]

Welcome indeed.
Seth

[Wilcken]

Ahoy!

Wilcken