I have never thought of myself as a poet.  I have written poetry ever since I picked up that big fat red pencil, but when I see myself it is as a novelist or a prose writer.  Odd because for the last couple years, I have been writing primarily poetry.  There is a challenge to compressing words until they have the density of a black hole, of honing the word choices until I find one that conveys my meaning better than another, of taking someone where I want them to go in four lines or two or even a couple words that is challenging.  That is poetry for me.  It is what I love most about it in my own and in the lovely words of my fellow Wednesday night writers.  Over those same years, I wrote very little prose and had little patience for hearing it or reading it (hangs head in shame).  I am very proud of the work that I accomplished over that time period.  Some lovely poetry that I hope to self-publish very soon.

But lately it has been more and more difficult to write, the flow seemed to be on hiatus.  That little bit of writer's block inducing some kind of mild panic.  Panic is generally unsuitable for writing which flows best out of a calm and thoughtful place.  Oh, not that I haven't written beautiful words under the influence of rage, or love, or a broken heart, just that the very best writing IMHO has come from that other place where I can choose to include those emotions - or not.  So for the last couple months it has been rough to go to my writing group.  Nothing new.  Editing old poems which I have come to hate.   The editing not the poems.

When it gets like this, I think maybe I have said everything I have to say in my writing and that it's time to move on.  I am a good move-r on-er.   I think about quitting Women Writing for a Change and focusing for a while on photography or hiking or art.  I imagine long days spent tromping through the decay of last year's leaves, or stalking the sunlight across my favorite landscape in an effort to immortalize it on film.  But I never quite make it do I?

I stick with the writing.

The writing evolves during these times from prose to poetry to blogging to prose to biography.  I never walk away from it, I just re-invent it to suit where I am.  Writing is good for that.  So the poetry has kinda died off (NB - the poetry WRITING has died off.  I could listen all day to great poetry) and I find I am moving back toward prose.  The novel still kinda staring at the back of my head.  This week tiny inspirations for story flinging themselves at me.  So, I give one some space on the page thinking it just needs out and then the poetry will continue.

But in writing this piece of fiction about someone's first sweat lodge, I found my voice again.  There was a freedom to expand outward that poetry did not afford me.  I could spin out conversation, background, plot taking up as much room as I needed without constraint.  I could breathe again.  Poetry does not give me that.  It gives me intensity, connection, emotion, and condensation.  Prose gives me expansion, history, story and space.  A good writer has need of all that.