Bryony Jagger
Creative Ideas

They
come
and go,
without rhyme
or reason, as if
to tempt one to philosophise
about the very nature of creativity.

I
mean...
why do
ideas
spring into my head?
Where exactly do they come from?
Why do they deign to choose me rather than someone else?

Has
one
any
choice in the
matter? Do you want
to be afflicted by poems?
Can one really refuse to co-operate with them?

Will
I
keep my
sanity
if I try to fight
against inspiration's power?
What exactly is this force that drives one to create?

Is
it
divine?
Or is it non-existent, a
linguistic misunderstanding?
Or is it something demonic that could destroy me?

Is
it
safer
to become
a writing machine
for transmission of ideas
into the linguistic medium of poetry?

They
come
and go,
these vagrant
ideas that dance
their wild way into poems. Their
metaphysical uncertainty tantalises.

At
what
point does
the poem
become existent?
When it first hits you? When it bugs you
to write it? When the first draft's written? When it's finished?

How
can
something
which does not
exist force you to
give it existence on paper?
On the face of it that seems to be nonsensical.

Yet,
if
I am
to explain
the evidence of
my own experience, it seems
to me that the creator is merely a passage

through
which
sails an
idea
from non-existence
to physical reality. We can grant the idea some shadowy being

in
Mind,
if we
want to flee
that non-existence
nonsense, without altering the
previous description of the creative process.

In
fact
it makes
more sense to
do so, if we want
to attribute agency to
the nascent idea before it is born in words.

It
makes
more sense
of the way
they come and go, these
wild vagrant ideas which ask
questions like: "How does nothing become something real?"