Nneka Edwards

Poetry is many things – a moment as honest as a teardrop, beauty as moving as waves washing the shoreline with lily shells, delight as sweet as a village festival lit up with rainbow lanterns. Poetry is as crystal as a stream. As you gaze past the ripples, you find the heart of the poet. Poetry is a question you never asked yourself. As you step into the footprints of a trail of thoughts, you find yourself in a beautiful place you never knew could be. And yes, poetry is also the rhythm of a silent drum-beat moving you through wording full of muted musicality.

It also means the captivating colour of striking imagery masterfully painted by the poet – a toucan’s rainbow peeping through shading foliage, or cocoa-coloured sea stars sprinkling the Caribbean Basin washed by blue-green transparency. Poetry can wash the soul with beauty, even when it speaks of what is ugly and unjust. Poetry causes nobility to spring from the heart as it sings of what is right and true.

Poetry for me is colour, music, rhyme (sometimes), rhythm, patterns, beauty. It is not murky mystery – me floundering in muddy meaning struggling to decipher the intent of the writer, gasping and spluttering as I wade through a dense maze of meaning that goes way over my head. That is not true poetry. It may or may not rhyme … but it loses me. It may seem profound … yet on deeper analysis, I find it to be arrogant nonsense … a mere pretender to the throne. True poetry blooms garden thoughts. It causes flower-patterned streams to spring within. It brings songs of spring to your soul, and the symphonies of life to your being. Good poetry is a jug of sunshine filling you up and over-spilling in joy. Poetry is simple goodness warming my heart. Poetry is me gemmed with beautiful thoughts.