A strange emptiness - Viv Wigley's Blog

Hi, fellow poets,

I've not posted anything for a long while, after several hundred poems on the soup, grateful for their reception and the friendships forged across the globe, but find myself in the Doldrums, which has lasted for some time. 

I started writing poetry in earnest back in 2015, published on this site and grateful for the feedback and critique from stalwarts such as Andrea Dietrich, Craig Cornish, Richard Lamoureux, Paul Callus, the late Connie Marcum Wong, Jan Allison and so many others who have generously given their time and love. 

I've had many issues to deal with since childhood in various forms, and believe, in retrospect, that poetry came along into my life when it did, like a winchman in a helicopter on a stormy sea, to catch my hand and lift me up, at just the right time. Since 2015, I have continued to do battle with circumstances, not just in hand to hand combat, as it were, but to sit back and evaluate the game of life, much like football coaches do during a game and a season, and adjust. I have now reached the point where I have solved several major issues, some still remain and will do out of love and commitment to family members, but at a cost-  I now seem to have lost my poetic muse, or my inspiration. It is like coming home to find that you have lost all of the instructions as to how to operate baisc equipment in your home, and you can't remember how to do it. My mind has been burgled. I remember watching the film Mary Poppins, where, at the end, she packs her bag, grabs her Umbrella and tells the children that it is time for her to leave. Because her work is done, there  are other people to help, and she flies off over London and is gone.  I think my Muse has done the same. It is really weird,  quite sad, I've lain awake on many nights for the sound of a distant thought to make me grab a pencil and scribble someting, but it isn't happening. I've renewed my membership on the soup to keep my work in the loop (that almost rhymes :) ) and just let folk know that I'm still around, but orbiting the flock without landing on the lake.  If poetry is an outlet for expression and relief from sadness or heartache, then maybe when things are looking up and the pressure is off, the valve just closes. I've no idea. 

But I'm still around, I shall read your works, friends, and who knows what will happen.

Life is unpredictable.

Every blessing, from my blank page x