A Life In Verse

 I wrote my first "serious" poem when I was 15 and the first poem I'm still willing to acknowledge three or four years later. During my twenties "poet" was my preferred identity. During my thirties I got into a groove and wrote regularly. Towards the end of that extended period I was active in the small, sour world of the poetry magazines and was keeping what amounted to a diary in verse. Once I started writing a blog the poems became fewer- which is just as well because the quality had been suffering. These days poems announce themselves every so often- at the rate of one or two a year. I'm always happy to see them.

T.S. Eliot wrote that there are no poets, just people who happen to write poetry. He had a point. No-one can be on song all the time and the Collected Works of "professional" poets are full of filler. Wordsworth is a very great poet but if the filler- which must about be seven eighths of his enormous output- were to disappear overnight nobody would miss it. 

I don't identify as a poet any longer- and most of my current friends and acquaintance are unaware that I write the stuff- which is fine. I don't wish to be a bore. Nevertheless when my friend Stephen Bann referred to me in the index of a recent book as "Tony Grist the poet" (as if there could be no doubt about it) I was immensely pleased...