Words by Carola Kolbeck @chameleoninhighheels

The power of poetry is in its ability to cast a "sideways" light on the world, allowing the truth to creep up on you. It assists us in comprehending and appreciating the world around us. There's no doubt about that. Poetry instructs us on how to conduct our lives. Poetry is like clearing the dirt from a window, in that it exposes human flaws so that we can see them more clearly and relate to a deeper understanding about the innermost emotions of each other a little better.

The use of poetry can substantially affect and nurture writing, speaking, and understanding. Learning writing rules and then breaking them with poetry can offer writing a new dimension of beauty. With its pace, rhythm, and rhyme, reading poetry aloud helps free the tongue and lay a solid basis for verbal connection. Understanding poetry provides the mental strength as well as the motivation to comprehend written communication.

Poetry as a therapeutic support for anxiety

Poetry Therapy is a type of creative arts therapy that uses the written word to help people comprehend and express their feelings and thoughts. Poetry is usually short, yet it is primarily emotional. Writers are able to express feelings they may not have realised they possessed until they put them down on paper. Depression and anxiety are two of the most common mental illnesses treated with bibliotherapy, and poetry can help people realise the barriers and blockages that have been created around their minds. It is tough to express one's feelings. Poetry has proven to be one of the most effective outlets for me. However - Although is brilliant for releasing one’s inner consternations it doesn't make good commercial reading - If you are planning to write commercially - think about what you are bringing to the reader - they wont want to be smothered in a negative quagmire!

Poetry making a comeback

Poetry as a genre has had its ups and down, and poetry lessons at school may bring back some unfavourable memories.  Whilst I personally relished reading of my natives Goethe, Schiller and Rilke, amongst many others, I also acknowledge that after weeks of lessons on late 18th to 19th century poetry, I was ready for something else.  Recent studies, however, have shown that poetry as a creative genre is making a comeback, and, according to the London School of Economics (2019), sales of poetry books have been soaring.  Gusejnova (2019) suggests the reason for this being is that, “throughout history, readers have been drawn to poetry in the context of political crises which fragment and challenge society”. This has been the case throughout history, and Gusejnova recalls other eras of uncertainty:
Dante was popular “during the conflict in the Italian city states; John Donne during the Reformation; Milton’s writing during the English civil war; the poets of Négritude and the plight of the African diaspora in the twentieth century; the work of the war poets during both World Wars in countries from China to the United States; Mandelstam, Akhmatova, Brodsky and the poetry of dissent in the Soviet Union.” (LSE, 2019).

Poems can give people not just a creative outlet where they can voice their emotions and deal with feelings of conflict and the unknown themselves.  Readers of poetry appreciate that poems resonate with them, making them feel less lonely or simply reassure them that someone out there is putting their own fears and anxieties into words.  Philosophical poems mostly deal with questions related to the meaning of life, theories of knowledge and knowing, principles of beauty, of things and the existence of a higher power.  

You may have heard of William Wordsworth, an 18th Century poet and a founding member of English Romanticism and prominent thinker. His work mainly consists of spiritual and epistemological speculation, a poet concerned with the human connection to nature, who uses the vocabulary and speech patterns of common people in his writing. One of Wordsworth’s most famous poems, ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’ is a good example of the poet’s inspiration with nature, and how the memory of the daffodils dancing in the wind, brings joy whenever he recalls them.

Seven Luminous Paths - A masterpiece by 

Tom Rubens for the times of uncertainty

Tom Rubens, a teacher of English in further and higher education, as well as author of eight books on Philosophy, a selection of poems and three novels is also active in radical politics, and in local community affairs.  His latest work, Seven Luminous Paths, is a selection of contemporary, philosophical poems.  A modern William Blake (1757 - 1827), who is described as one of the key figures of English Romanticism, Rubens is not shy to call out injustice and sensitive topics.  Blake used to openly speak out against injustice in his own lifetime: slavery, racism, poverty, and the corruption of those in power.  Rubens’ poems equally touch on current themes in society, such as The Black Lives Matter Movement in Winter Night on Brixton Road:

So different from the African skies
under which their ancestors were bought,
And so different from the American skies
under which they were sold.

Kindle

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seven-Luminous-Paths-Tom-Rubens-ebook/dp/B09G5SZ68Q/ref=sr_1_13?qid=1638295201&refinements=p_27%3ATom+Rubens&s=books&sr=1-13

He also touches on economic changes, like in Dockland Once:

What stretches before the gaze
Is neither church nor palace nor
Futuristic fuselage of glass and steel,
But instead
A clif-chain breadth
Of warehouses, grey-brick,
Impressively high but
As mute this waning Sunday
As on each and every Monday. 

He is also heavily influenced by nature and British land, with poems such as Below Snowdon, South Downs 1 & 2 and The Sea at Marazion.  In the latter, he paints a clear and detailed picture of the southern coast of Cornwall that has you smelling the rich air near the sea and see the beauty of the ocean and the beach:

Later, high up once more,
Out in the bay and looking west,
From the walls of the castle of
St. Michael Mount,
You see how sea-line's height
exceeds that previous;
Near-mauve is now near-silver,
As sun weighs the heavier on
the greater distance.
Horizon implies, for the first time.

Like Blake’s poems, Rubens’ language is diverse and symbolically rich and he combines his expertise and command of the English language in this latest publication.  Scott Stahlecker’s Foreword refers to Rubens’ “timely poems” and honours “Rubens’ humanistic sensitivities”.  He also acknowledges that “lovers of the arts will also appreciate the sensual experiences unleashed in Rubens’s poems.” Frieze around the base of the Albert Memorial and St Paul’s at Summer’s Peak both take the reader for a close up with monuments and memorials, exploring not only in beautiful words their exterior, but also take us on a closer journey of their meaning and background history:

Though the eye rose
with the golden motif,
With the marble it slowly edges across,
As along a line of choicest verse.
For here it is regaled with
A chiselled vista of life-size figures
Come from every point
on history's compass;

If you are looking for a sing-song rhythm in Rubens’ poetry, you will not find it.  As Stahlecker notes, “stylistically, his verses defy conventional form, yet they curve along with a melodic flow, and are filled with stimulating visuals and evocative words that delight the senses. Consequently, you will not only be enjoying the poem Penetration, but you will be buttoning up your coat and feeling its penetrating effects Like the tip of a slender icicle into flesh” (Rubens, 2021).

Rubens’ Seven Luminous Paths is a feast for the senses and an experience that makes you wonder how many words of the English language are underused.  It paints delicate and intricate pictures in front of your mind’s eye and takes you on journeys set both in the past and the present.  This collection will wrap you up in its own world, like a blanket on a cold winter’s evening.  And what’s better than going on a walk in a beautiful wonderland as the nights are dark and cold?

To grab your copy of Seven Luminous Paths, go to:

PaperBack

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seven-Luminous-Paths-Tom-Rubens/dp/1912951371/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1638295201&sr=1-13

Tips how to read poetry 

1. Poetry anthologies are an excellent place to start because they offer a range of voices.

2. Reading poetry doesn’t require a highfalutin approach; you can read as you’d read anything else. 

3. If you didn’t feel a connection to the poem, it’s okay 

4. Re-Read the poem twice and you will notice little extra meanings the second time 

5. Don't be afraid of unfamiliar words - sometimes authors make their up to express the emotion

6. Resist the urge to stop halfway through reading - give yourself time to become accustomed to the artform

References:

London School of  Economics. 2019. Whys is poetry having a moment?. Available at: Why is poetry having a moment? (lse.ac.uk). Accessed 29th November 2021

Poetry Archive. 2021. William Blake. Available at: William Blake - Poetry Archive. Accessed 29th November 2021

Rubens, T. 2021. Seven Illuminous Paths. London: Happy London Press