Heather Stewart Poetry

As also shown on my main page, these are the poets that have inspired me. I’ve read plenty of poetry, I actually try reading only poetry every April, but these volumes by thes poets stick out. To be fair, Fierce Fairytales is a new addition, but I think about it all the time.

Wilfred Owen got me into the genre. There’s something so haunting about Dulce et Decorum Est. Before that poem, I had only ever read poetry that was picked out by schools. I had only ever liked Poe’s The Raven, iconic as it is. But war poetry was not something I even knew existed. I started with Dulce et Decorum Est and felt so many of the others.

I think the one that hit me the hardest was

The Parable of the Old Man and the Young 

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
and builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

It just hits me every time I read it. There’s so much in so few lines.

amanda lovelace came later. I was looking for poetry for an April read one year and came across her first collection, the princess saves herself in this one. That title. It was everything I was looking for and then the witch doesn’t burn in this one came out and I was done. It’s probably my all time favorite book of poetry and yet I can’t seem to keep a copy in my possession. Every time I have one, I come across a friend in need of some fire and it helps them too.

I was doing some reading on Nobel Laureates when I found Wislawa Szymborska. I read Map and this poem was in it:

The End and The Beginning

After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won’t
straighten themselves up, after all.

Someone has to push the rubble
to the side of the road,
so the corpse-filled wagons
can pass.

Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.

Someone has to drag in a girder
to prop up a wall.
Someone has to glaze a window,
rehang a door.

Photogenic it’s not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.

We’ll need the bridges back,
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.

Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls the way it was.
Someone else listens
and nods with unsevered head.
But already there are those nearby
starting to mill about
who will find it dull.

From out of the bushes
sometimes someone still unearths
rusted-out arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.

Those who knew
what was going on here
must make way for
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.

In the grass that has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out
blade of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds.

It may have also been shortly after the messaging with the “War on Terror” shifting after having been in the military from before 9/11 to after the deaths of both Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. In a lot of ways, I felt this one at the time and it wasn’t written about an entirely different war. It’s disconcerting in it’s own way but also strangely cathartic.

It was after I had written my first drafts of most of my collection that I came across Nikita Gill. I had seen her work before but it was stacked on my TBR for far too long. I was editing my own poems and there was something off about them, something missing. Reading Nikita Gill’s work helped me find it. I had been so immersed in the short instapoems for so long that it was her work that brought me back to contemporary free verse with a little more heft. Not necessarily more impact, but more story to them. amanda lovelace says so much in such short spaces, but my stories weren’t compacted that way. Still, I wanted to convey a little of both, which I worked out in the end.

There are many more poets I appreciate and love and will be sharing with you all but these four brought where I am these days. Who inspires you?