Guest post from kevin morris, poet.

Today I welcome one of my favourite poets to my blog.

Kevin Morris is a poet who writes both humorous and serious poetry. I will hand over to Kevin now, and he can explain about his poetry much better than I can.

Welcome, Kevin. Please tell us about your poetry.

I have, for as long as I can remember, been a lover of poetry. The first poem I recollect having read is Alfred Noyes’s “The Highwayman”, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43187/the-highwayman. I was (and remain)entranced by the rhythm of the poem and how it matches the beat of the horse’s feet, as the Highwayman approaches the inn:

“The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.   
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.   
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,   
And the highwayman came riding—
         Riding—riding—
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door”.

I find good rhyming poetry profoundly beautiful, and much of my own work is written in rhyme. Take, for example my poem “Autumn Fly”, which appears in my forthcoming collection, “Light and Shade: Serious (and Not so Serious) poems”.

Image by FRANCO PATRIZIA from Pixabay

“An autumn fly
Buzzes around my head.
Summer is dead
Yet will not die.
Seasons pass.
We are brittle as glass,
This fly
And I”.

Whilst sitting in my study, in late autumn, a fly began buzzing around my head. This brought to mind the mortality of this tiny insect and also that of man. Hence the above poem was born.

I have many happy memories of strolling through the woods with my grandfather and it was from him that I gained my love of nature. This affection for nature was, I believe encouraged further by my reading of poems such as Keats “Autumn”. Much of my own poetry touches on the theme of nature. Take, for example my poem “Rain”.

Image by AlbiF from Pixabay

“The rain
Patters amongst these leaves.
I listen again
And ascertain
That it’s the breeze
Midst these trees.
Yet it sounds the same
As rain”.

As with “Autumn Fly”, “Rain” came to me naturally as a rhyming poem. I could not have expressed what I wished to convey had I utilised free verse, as rhyme comes naturally to me, whilst other forms of poetic expression do not.

Whilst there exists some wonderful poetry composed in free verse, to me much free verse is poetic prose rather than true poetry. Many poems written in free verse are beautiful. However, for me their beauty resides in their poetic prose, they are not, in my opinion poetry as I understand it (I.E. with real rhyme and metre).

One can not always be serious, and section 2 of “Light and Shade” is devoted to my humorous verses. Take, for example my poem “Jane’s Sad Refrain”:

“A young lady named Jane
Sang a most mournful refrain.
I could repeat her song,
As it wouldn’t take long,
But it’s copyright of Jane!”

To conclude. Poetry is, for me about rhyme and its rhyme with which I feel most comfortable. There is, as I said, some wonderful free verse poetry out there. However, for me at least much of this (but by no means all) is poetic prose rather than poetry proper.

(“Light and Shade: Serious (and Not so Serious) Poems”, by Kevin Morris will be available in the Amazon Kindle store, and as a paperback in July 2020).

Links:

Blog: https://kmorrispoet.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/drewdog2060_
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6879063.K_Morris

Thank you, Kevin, for telling us more about your poetry. I agree with you about free verse. It’s something I’ve thought for a long time. I have written poetry that doesn’t rhyme, but it always has rhythm. And I love the poem about Jane!

I would encourage everyone to search out your poetry books and to visit your blog.

Good luck with this latest one. I look forward to its publication.

If you have any comments to either myself, or Kevin, please enter them in the comments box. Feel free to reblog this.