Andrew Waterhouse

When I first start writing poetry most of it was inspired by depression, emotional pain and various forms of inner darkness. Because my poems were (and still are) often slightly surreal I didn't have to deal with people making direct judgements on my inner demons, which would've quite traumatic.

I suppose my question really is, is there a point at which expressing such feelings through poetry stops being cathartic and becomes whatever the opposite of cathartic is i.e harmful ? I'm thinking Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton (there are probably many, many others).

Another possibility is, that if Sylvia Plath HADN'T written, maybe she'd have committed suicide sooner...

This is too spooky for words - I had a similiar conversation with Fay about poetry being destructive last night. Of course, fay thought writing poetry was wonderful and made us all view the world a bit differently. However, sometimes I think it can make you analyse things far too much, instead of enjoying things for what they are, we tend to sit back and try to fit it into the bigger scheme. Anyway we both came to the conclusion that we can't stop writing poetry (bit like a drug) so we should just accept our fate! Further to this I thought it a bit strange that I was sitting in on a Friday night discussing the merits of poetry with someone I haven't even met! :0) Hope this all made sense! Sarah.

For me, with poetry, to a much greater extent than other writing, it's something I feel driven to, so I find it quite hard to stop writing even if I wanted to. I don't think the act of writing poetry would ever really be harmful as it's just an expression of what's going on in your head. The stuff in your head may be harmful but I don't think not writing about it makes it go away. In that sense it's fairly neutral. David

*agrees*

Maybe not the act of writing poetry, because after all it is just a creative process. But do you think maybe analysing life as much as i find myself doing, when writing a poem, is healthy? Just a thought - I am very much undecided.

language creates us as much as we create language.

Maybe Plath would have committed suicide sooner, but equally, sitting down for however long it takes to write something like Daddy, thinking about how much you hate your father - can that really do you much good ? And once you get locked into that role of angry poet, dredging up the pain, how do you get off and say, actually I feel better now ? Don't you have to keep scraping away at painful memories, hoping for a bit more meat on the bones that you can turn into poetry ? I really don't know - I have never been an autobiographical writer, never felt compelled to write about me and my life. (Perhaps as a result of having to read Cider with Rosie at school, where I decided that an author ought to have had an interesting life before inflicting it on others). That being the case, I really don't know if it helps, hinders or does neither. I am interested though. Some of the poets here who write the self-mutilation pieces, their pain and descriptions seem to often get stronger and more intense. If they are swopping actual injury for fictional, than that has got to be a good thing; but if the poems are factual then my heart really does go out to them. (As I've said earlier, I'm not a trained counsellor, but I have spoken to a lot of them and a universal theme is that therapy that works on getting into the past and difficult issues, makes things substantially worse before they get better. It is necessary, but in the short term it is very hard and a lot of people don't move through that to the next stage.)

An interesting article Judith. How sad though.....

I have to say, there are times when I worry about people here. There are a lot of people writing poetry that is very obviously from the heart and who are in a great deal of pain. I'm not a trained counsellor or anything and wouldn't really know how to start helping these people, but I do hope that things get better for them. It is a little (to be trite for a moment) like that Nick Hornby line - Do I listen to soul music because I'm miserable and have had unhappy love affairs, or am I miserable and have had unhappy love affairs because I listen to soul music ? In short, are poems good for people in emotional pain ?

Definitely the former I would say, Andrew (re the music). And you all know what an outstanding poet I am...