Inspiration in the Background

The weather is bleak and its so cold outside that if any bits of your skin happen to accidentally be exposed they automatically freeze and fall off. These are the times when we most need comfort and inspiration. We look to others or inside ourselves because looking outside is so depressing. You don't have to be an artist or a writer to be inspired by something. Maybe something seemingly inane. Maybe something no one else quite gets. It doesn't have to be something regarded by critics as a great work of art, or acclaimed as a master piece. It could be anything, it doesn't matter. The nature of inspiration is not divisible by snobbery or opinion. We're all inspired by something aren't we?

This is why I love poetry so much - it's lack of judgment, it's lack of hierarchy. Language is a form of communication and expression innate to humans (and, according to David Attenborough, certain species of chimpanzee, possibly) and its utilization is thus classless, in essence at least. Poetry is the natural playing of language, a structure regarded by some linguists as intrinsically creative in its conception and all subsequent usages - constantly having to adapt in order to function as a communicative tool. Poetry is so direct because there is no mediation; it is the poet, it is their influences, it is their inner voice. How ever a poet uses language tells you more about them and explains both poem and poet.

One of the first poets and spoken word artists I ever saw perform is still my favorite, and when I feel a lack of inspiration on such days as February brings she always reminds me about why poetry is such a great form of expression. Her name is Laura Dockrill and here she is performing her amazing poem 'Heaven Knows' about a try-hard trendy mum stopping at nothing to be down with the kids.





Incidentally, the title of this post comes from the collection which this poem is published in, Mistakes in the Background, available to purchase over on amazon. Trust me, it's great, but you need to see her live to get the full Laura Dockrill Experience.