It is not with ideas that we write verses … it is with words

Since I’ve been dickering and dabbling with poetry I’ve had quite a lot of ideas for poems, or short stories perhaps. The trouble is that the ideas still leave me staring at a blank screen scratching my head. Here’s two of them. The Devil in disguise (good song title) is walking unnoticed round the streets of Leeds and Bradford exalting in the success of the ‘good’ work he has been doing. His work is done. Everything he set out to achieve has been achieved. He can now relax. But there are unexpected consequence of him taking his (her?) eye off the ball, Second idea. All the tormented labour – slave, child, coerced, trafficked, exploited and abused, that was devoured by the processes that produce the material wealth of the rich and comfortable leaks out of the luxury products, re-embodies and wreaks vengeance on the plump soft unresisting bodies of the rich and complacent. Lovely.

But, a quote from Mallarme “Ce n’est point avec des idées que l’on fait des vers… c’est avec des mots”. It is not with ideas that we write verses … it is with words.

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