Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

As far as I can remember I began to write one morning at dawn when I was five years old and my governess was still asleep with a stolen pen, and I wrote till the sun went down to everyone’s astonishment.. When the lamps were lit I went on writing deep into the night until the pen fell from my hands in the small hours of the morning. In my sleep I picked up my pen once more and went on writing in the manner of a somnambulist. For the next few weeks I went on writing in spite of everything or even because of it. No admonitions, scoldings or punishments could stop me, and even then my inspiration did not run out. My room was in a sorry state with sentences, paragraphs, chapters, all piling up to the ceiling, while new manuscripts surged up ceaselessly from below running down the stairs to the apartements of our neighbors who had to slash through a jungle of words to get through into their kitchens or bathrooms. Soon the town was flooded and the traffic jams were terrific. As they spread beyond the city, my words began to fill up the universe. They stretched in huge luminous sentences so long that even I could not read them from end to end without forgetting how they had begun. A slow drizzle of words began to fall on the world and people looked up into the sky arid wondered where it came from. Could it be that God’s hand, writing the famous Word, had gone crazy? Someone must be writing up there they said placidly and shrugged their shoulders. It was then when a flood was just about to submerge the continents, that I stopped in the nick of time, and gave up personal creation. I decided the effort was too great and that from now on I would only use intermediaries. I developed a system of possessing every available writer telepathically and guiding his or her hand at will. This process became automatic after some practice on my part. And now all the books written by others are in reality by me. This method is far more comfortable than the previous one and has turned me into a universal ghost writer. In my new role I remain strictly anonymous.  But I don’t mind. It’s a pleasure to browse through the Book Stalls in the Terminals and remember each book as I conceived it.  I don’t need to read them of course because I know what’s in them. All I have to do is flash the title through my mind and the rest comes back instantly. I now look forward to the third phase which I am about to call The End of Writing.

   In this next period I will be able to make direct contact with my readers and dispense with all this mass of hired labour of middle persons whom I am currently employing and who I have playfully refered to as HIRED HIEROGLYPHS, upon which promptly someone wrote a book of poems with that title.  A totally insignificant Greek poet. It makes me laugh when people refer to him as the author. For every one of my thoughts is picked up immediately, as merchandise is in the supermarkets, by those people currently known as creators. My trashy thoughts are picked up by hacks and my better moments by the most talented. However, in the future I will do away with all this clumsy machinery and I will feed my readers directly with the real thing.  My raw thoughts.  They will then experience something resembling their breast-feeding age, a total bliss, sometimes refered to as an altered state of consciousness, a sort of dream like state of ecstasy. The end of reading and of writing will then occur. The written signs and sounds will be replaced by a permanent matrix of total meaning in which everything will be inserted as part of reality. Trees, stones, people, events, numbers, the people themselves, will be the language. Everything will read and be read simultaneously if that word has any meaning left. All will then experience a totality so wonderful so rich in depth and breadth that it will closely resemble what today we call insanity. As meaning proliferates endlessly conrnunication will break down. No exchange of information will any longer be possible thank god. Each one will live as plants do, for himself, in himself and by himself, in a state, described by the Jainas as Kayvalyam or total detachment. During this cycle the universe will disappear with everything that is in it and both I and all the others will go on experiencing absolute selfness, the ultimate, indifferent to what could still possibly be going on around us and forgetful of each other’s existence.  That will be no doubt the final split second which is bound to last for all eternity. Till then let’s hope that no one will blow my cover and foil my plans. Keep your fingers crossed.