What’s the point of writing anyway?

What’s the point of writing if all it does is sit in your notebook or on your hard drive? I have been writing poems for almost twenty years and have never tried to have anything published. There are many reasons for that (mostly that I have a dissertation that desperately am trying to finish, and time spent looking for publication outlets is time that should be spent on that dissertation).

However, at the same time, I have an email distribution list of over 200 people that I send new poems to when they are written, and I have always figured that more people read my poems that way than would if I actually did publish them. Also, as my dissertation approaches the finish line, I am starting to think more seriously about publication.

That being said, I had a very interesting experience last Wednesday. I was invited by Sue Walker, the Poet Laureate of Alabama, to be a featured poet at a Poetry Theatre event at the University of South Alabama. There were over fifty people crammed into a smallish room, and everything went wonderfully.

No one threw anything. There weren’t even any boos. I didn’t fall down. And even though there were a couple of words that I stumbled on (which isn’t too bad considering I was on stage for close to 25 minutes), I didn’t drop any expletives out of disgust with myself when it happened. So, all indications suggest it was a pretty successful evening…

I have always thought my poetry was good, and everyone on my distribution list would seem to agree, but I was never terribly confident that people who knew poetry but didn’t know me would feel the same way. Well, of those 50+ people at the reading, I only knew about ten of them, and all seemed very pleased. I was even asked to do an encore at the end of the evening.

The point is that if you are going to go to the trouble to write something, go to the trouble to share with others.