the Poet
As I write these words it is December 2025, I am 61 and have had Parkinson’s Disease for 17 years, it is a very tough gig indeed. If you have it, its constant demands on body and mind are exhausting, I’m reminded how puzzled I was when someone died, and at the Wake folk would say he fought hard against this or that, or she battled on etc, and I used to think, what do they really mean? Now I get it! Anyone with a chronic Illness has to fight the demons that plague them, and you take all the help you can get. In my case, I reached a point as low as it gets, luckily, various confluences, coincidences and the care of a young Psychologist who introduced me to the concept of mindfulness, and this coincided with a renewed interest in Poetry. In very simple terms, it concerns being more aware of your surroundings and yourself, this is one of the reasons my writing is under the name ‘Hidden Self Poetry’. For myself, Poetry requires exactly the mindset that is sought in mindfulness. All art is beneficial to mental health, but there’s nothing like poetry that creates such a symbiotic state between our Emotions and Intellect. If anyone has questions I’m happy to offer an opinion, This ‘thing’, this creative desire can become all-consuming, at which point it becomes ‘the Gentle Madness’. In addition to the link to mindfulness, Hidden Self Poetry refers to the layers of persona we acquire when needed through life, Butterfly ghosts are those bits of thought and memory that you can always recall and seem to be always just out of reach. My belief is that being creative, engaging in creativity, is vital for the wellbeing of self and society.
You must be logged in to post a comment.