This piece is part of our 2023 Community Writing Series showcasing new writing by the Wandsworth Carers Centre Writers Group, in observance of Carers Rights Day 2023. You can read more about the background to this project in our introduction to this series, find out more about Wandsworth Carers Centre on their website, and find them on Twitter @CarerWandeworth.
A note from the author:
I enjoy writing stories about observations I make of people’s lives. Sometimes a conversation may trigger a thought. This poem was inspired by a conversation I had with a teenager who had to analyse poetry for their English literature course at school. Poems can sometimes intimidate the reader as I have experienced myself, and before joining the Wandsworth carers writing group I would not have had the confidence to write a poem and put it out there for anyone to read.
The Anti-Poem (a teenagers lament on poetry)
by Jo
What is a poem but a bunch of words stuck on a page.
Who cares?
Who wants to know who’s written it and why?
Why?
I don’t always get it, and it fills me with dread.
I like the ones that rhyme and make me laugh, and some are quite clever and stick in my head.
What is a poem?
A piece of art of what’s in your heart?
A feeling?
A thought?
A memory?
Oh please…..
How do you know if you understand it if it doesn’t make any sense?
And what is the point if you don’t understand it? Just make it stop, the thoughts in my head!
I’d rather be dead than read another one. It makes me feel physically sick!
But why? I ask myself,
do I have a reaction to a written piece of infraction that seeps under my skin, and why should I care?
Don’t ask me why, I’ve just written a poem.
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