* Free Poetry?

2019 brings me around full circle to where I was in 2007.  I found myself face to face with my poetry and wondering what to do with it.  I had been writing and storing poems for years.  There was the odd occasion where I could add a poem or five to a publication among other unknown and aspiring poets. In 2007, I started compiling works of poetry for my own compilation.

There were a lot of changes in my life that had transpired that year to encourage me in to a space to risk money, time and secrets in the pursuit of authorship.  My Oma had passed away right after Christmas 2006; I had changes at work in Calgary that had me rethinking my career choice;  I was in a relationship that was going nowhere and unbeknownst to me at the time before my eventual move, my dad was sick with the onset of cancer.   I uprooted a fourteen year life in Calgary, moved to my parent's farm,  transferred to Edmonton Emco and started to assemble a collection of my poetry.

In 2008, my life changed again.  I had spent the fall and winter months working on my book.  Dad was already spending most of his time in a hospital bed that we moved into the house.  I remember sitting with him one day and then telling him that I was going to my desk to work on my book. 

"That's important too."  He told me.   It was like his blessing on my creative venture.  So I went to my desk and worked and he watched me from his bed.  The last poem to go in to the collection was one that I wrote for him.  Amazingly enough, I even got to read it to him before he died at the end of January.  

There was a lot involved in the book making process, and when that process was complete for me, I took a trip to Vancouver Island.  I stopped in at the publishers in Victoria and submitted my final manuscript of "Still Broken" for publication and then continued on to Tofino where I stood in the waters of the Pacific Ocean welcomed myself into forty.

I didn't know at the time that in one year my life would change again. I would get married and my focus would change.  As a result of that change in focus, there are still a lot of books in my Mom's garage.  I wasn't very diligent in promoting sales and as a result, there is inventory and here I am eleven years later wondering what to do with the inventory.

I have been a blogger for a lot of years, but last fall I decided to start a blog for my poetry. I went through the Pre-2008 archives and found poetry that I hadn't published in "Still Broken" and I went through the last ten years of poetry and found some favourites and I downloaded them into "The Precious Poet" blog.  Now I tell people that I am published again and it didn't cost ten grand to do it.  That's right... Free Poetry.  Again I am risking my time and my secrets, but this time it is not going to cost extra money for me or the reader.

"Free Poetry... so you are not making any money.  Why?"

Because I never have.  I didn't make anything on my book.  The profits from any sales of the book went to a camp in honour of my dad.  I don't write poetry for financial gain.  I couldn't imagine the poems would be any good if I was motivated by money to create them.  They are created solely out of passion, pain, love and hope.  I realize it is a risk to put your art into a world that doesn't understand that motivation, but for me it would be worse to hoard the emotion, hide the pain and not share the lessons learned in life.  So because of that... I give you... Free Poetry.





(Written in March 2019, but published to Blog March 7, 2020)