Enjoying Robert Graves (Again): On 'Being' a 'Poet'

I cannot say that Robert Graves influenced or inspired by writing, both stories and poems. I can say, with complete knowingness, that reading this kind of knowledge of his inspired me to trust and then follow my own inspiration - the touchCallingWhisperTug of the Source - in my writing.

This interview with Leslie Norris, also a great 'British' poet (acknowledging that poetry is universal), was published in The Listener 28 May 1970.

Here are a couple of questions from Norris and Graves' response.

Dharma

Do you consider yourself fortunate inhaving been a poet?

There's no alternative. If you're born that way, that's your fate - and you've got to do your best. It's a way of life. You have to be in the world, but not of the world, as the Sufis say. You can't cheat and you must only say what you have to say and not what people would like you to say.

I love this! No 'cheating'. Be true to 'you'. And ... Thy will be Done.

And ... a Poet is ...?

You've written that you write poems for poets. Do you mean you write poems exclusively for poets, or for people who live as poets do?

A poet is a person who lives and thinks in a certain way. A poet doesn't necessarily write poems. It is simply an attitude, and there are a great many more poets around than meet the eve. I think about one person in 20 is perhaps a poet. The ones who are not poets expect something of what they think is poetry, which I don't propose to give them. What I write is for people to understand who are on the same, as they say, wavelength as myself. I don't write for an audience at all really: I write for myself. But the audience is presumably there.

The Source (of 'Inspiration')

The Bridge is always open from meYouMe to the Source. The Source that touchesCallsWhispersTugs at us to write this ... paint this ... dance this.

Tending to our side of the Bridge is our Duty, our Dharma. The other side of the Bridge and what lies there takes care of Itself quite perfectly, thank you. Once we do our work on our side of the Bridge then Inspiration is AlwaysOn.

Namaste! I bow to and honor the light within you!