In the middle of last year I began writing a series of poems that were very miserable and full of darkness. There were many reasons for this, and thankfully not all of them were concerned with my own miseryat the time (which was plentiful enough). However, the results made for fairly grim reading: the word “darkness” appeared frequently.
So when I used the line “Darkness is a shade of black” as a starting line, warning bells were ringing. Maybe it was a conscious atempt to avoid anything grim that resulted in me angling for a poem that is about the multitude of colours and shades available, rather than just balck (and indeed, using more shades than just grey).
This has resulted in me writing something which, if not predominately happy in itself, has made me happy through writing it and realising a form of writing which feels as such. Its made made think about a “writing happiness” workshop I did a couple of months back, which I struggled with at the time. Getting somewhere now has at least vindicated the attempt to learn to move in that direction.
The working title is appalling mind: ‘Shades of Sight’. This will be changed when I can think of something better.
