Everyone Wants to Belong

I don't care who you are, be you maverick or sycophant, deep in the human soul there is a longing to belong. It's what banded us together in caves and it's what drives Social Networking in the 21st Century.

I was recently accepted/inducted into a community of poets who publish poems on a group website called the Tuesday Poem.

I felt proud and honoured to be drawn into this community of both New Zealand and international poets. Poetry is not revered like rugby in this country, but it is surprising the number of people who beaver away at making poetry. It is a form of literature that is probably as old as humankind itself.

What drives poets? I cannot actually answer that question. The answers are probably as many and varied as the poets themselves. I humbly proffer the opinion that it is a need to communicate with our fellow humans, to wrestle meaning from the world, to re-frame the world, to look and observe and achieve a different kind of seeing.

Anyway, Tuesday Poem is a wonderful idea. I marvel at all the creative outpourings of others and it stimulates me to write more poetry which is a good thing. It doesn't get the vacuuming done or the meals cooked, but we must balance the lyrical with the prosaic or we will shrivel up inside.