The Beginning of a Poet, Again

Upon discovering that Mike Hopkins is following the example set by Jennifer Liston to post a new poem every day throughout April, I decided I’d like to follow suit.

UPDATE (15 April 2012):
I am delaying this project until October 2012, when I get my new computer.

Yes, I am a poet. Have been for almost thirty years. I don’t publicise this fact all that often, and I haven’t published any of my work. At least not yet.

Ok, that’s not quite true. I’ve compiled all my poems into book-format. Did that about 18 years ago. Back in the late 1980’s, I hand-typed them all. In the early 90’s I spent hundreds of hours typing them into computers and saving to floppy disc drives. In the late 90’s and early 00’s I then saved them to multiple CD’s.

I even followed advice given by the SA Writers Centre many years ago to mail to myself, but not to open the mail. Thereby giving a stamped date to prove I was the writer and owner of the work, only to be owned in a court of law. This is the reason why I continually choose not to publish online. Because, seriously, who wants to go through the hassle of proving to be the writer of text you hold near and dear?

I wrote a lot to express moments of my life, to display the inner workings of my mind, and to vent issues that have annoyed me over the years. A few are about happiness, others about time spent trying to become a church-goer, plus a few are about finding and losing myself. A great many are about love, both the gain and the loss. And a portion are simply cryptic interpretations of life, the universe and nothing important.

But I let it all slide away many years ago. Life took over, I got a job, I found someone willing to marry me and my twisted complex mind, and I turned toward a corporate working life.

These days I mostly use my photography to stay sane and to remember moments of my life that mean a lot to me, much the same way I used poetry all those years ago.

Which means I have a huge backlog of written-work that I may consider posting online. Personally, I’d like to skip all this and move to straight to publishing a book. Much of my poetry has been read by a woman who has not only published a few of her books, she has written biographies for my father’s grandparents, plus has worked with the SA Writers Centre – and continually wonders when I will take the next step.

Before I do anything else, I’m looking for your thoughts:

Should I post them individually as
~ text;
~ PDF’s; OR
~ or as an image? (which means I screen-dump the text and save as JPEG’s then display within separate posts.)

How do you post your poetry online, and how should I present mine? Feel free to respond here, upon Facebook, even Twitter. Or chat with me tomorrow night (3rd April 2012):