I started writing poetry at the age of 16. I still vividly remember the summer evening when I wrote my first ever poems. I stayed up late, after my parents had gone to bed, and lay on the floor in my room, writing feverishly into the back of one of my school exercise books. I felt like a river flowing, as if something had broken open inside me.
At university I studied English and American Literature, and although I read a lot of great books, I found the course disappointing. Literary criticism was like analysing the dots in a blown up photograph, and missing the meaning of the photograph as a whole.
I carried on writing poetry, even though I wasn’t very happy with what I wrote. Since I loved the Romantic poets like William Wordsworth and Shelley so much, I attempted to emulate their style, but in modern times that style just seems awkward and pretentious. My vocabulary seemed clumsy and I couldn’t find the right rhythm, like a runner when he’s out of the ‘zone.’ As a result, in my mid-20s I stopped writing poetry. I didn’t feel any sense of loss, since I was writing other things instead.
I never even thought about writing poetry again. So imagine my surprise when, in about 2006, not long after our second baby Ted was born, the ‘muse’ descended on me again. The only thing I can connect it to is that it was a very stressful time. Ted didn’t seem to sleep at all for about six months and we were caring for Ted’s three-year-old brother at the same time. The stress and sleeplessness seemed to break me open and allowed creative potentials to flow through.
The strange thing was that – again, for no obvious reason – I had acquired an authentic poetic voice. Whereas before I had always struggled, now the lines came easily. I didn’t have to consciously strive for the right rhythm or the right phrases. They seemed to naturally form
themselves. It was a bit like waking up in the morning and finding you can speak a foreign language. And ever since then, the voice has stayed with me.
Now I’ve just published my fourth book of poetry, Back to Stillness: Poems for Spiritual Awakening, containing over 60 poems that are intended to guide people on a journey of spiritual awakening. More details here: www.stevenmtaylor.com/books
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