I haven’t done much about poetry on this blog. I’ve written about lyrics, but that’s not quite the same. Lyrics might be considered poetry, I suppose, but they are intrinsically linked to a piece of music, while poetry has to stand on its own.

And poetry can be a bit intimidating, can’t it? Which is probably why I’ve avoided it – it feels a bit too much like hard work to find your way into poetry and understand what’s going on.

But I found a way into Unstuck by Ceri Morgan, and I’m glad I did.

My way in here was simply that I saw Ceri’s posts on social media, having started following her because of a film she produced (I have certainly written a lot about films on here) and because I’m friends with one of her family members.

Hearing Ceri read some of the poems on Instagram was the clincher – her mellifluous voice, with the hint of a soft South Wales valleys accent made these poems seem almost musical. These were like song lyrics, after all, but [no offence to my songwriting friends] more profound and personal than you’d find in most songs.

Unstuck is a collection of some 40 poems in a paperback chapbook published by Dithering Chaps, about places Ceri has lived, experiences, memories, illness, sadness, and intimate moments.

At times, I felt ‘you shouldn’t be telling me this – I have no right to know!’ But that’s one of the beauties of art, I suppose – artists are willing to share what’s hidden, acknowledge vulnerabilities, expose themselves to us. So, we as readers may recognise similar experiences and feelings in our own lives and are all the more moved because of it.

Asked how Unstuck came about, Ceri told me: “I wrote some poetry as a teenager, like many precocious Valleys wannabe bohemians. I started writing it seriously around 10 years ago, after being asked to teach some creative writing at work [as a university academic].

“The poems were written over that 10-year period. I used to write only one or two poems a year, but had to speed up dramatically after winning the Dithering Chaps competition in November last year.

“I had enough poems to enter but not enough for a full collection!

“My editors, David and Gena Herring, were brilliant, and had suggestions as to how I could structure the book and the kinds of poems I could add.

“They encouraged me to write more personal poems — many of my earlier poems were on work-related themes. I am a Quebec literature specialist.

“I was nervous about writing more intimate work, but I think the collection is better for it, and the poems about family, friends and love are the most popular so far!”

They’re certainly the ones that resonated most with me, and if you’d like to see for yourself, you can buy the book here.

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