I want to tell you something of my own journey because it is what I

know, and because I think there are some common threads that you may
be able to identify in other journeys, including your own.
Before I knew I wanted to read or write poetry, I knew I loved words.
Poetry requires an acute awareness of language, and language is, at its
core, words.
Thesaurus (Billy Collins).
Growing up, I was surrounded by the practical—disassembled elec-
tronic equipment all about the house, everyone I knew wanting to become
engineers and doctors, and my railwayman father.
Fortunately, there were also many, many books available. And fortu-
nately, the school system paid little attention to language and the arts. This
allowed me to keep and develop my love of words without any interfer-
ence from my education.
Introduction to Poetry (Billy Collins).
When I was finishing up high school, I met a living poet, Tarun Cheriyan.
That was when I knew I wanted to write poetry. My first attempts were
like a diary, and mostly fragments.
In college, I signed up for ”Writing Poetry” with Robert Flanagan. That
changed everything. I learned about craft, and for the first time, I knew
poetry transcended hobby status in my life.
The Bridge Across the Ganges.
I loved the attention I got in the workshop. I also ”went in” for poetry. I
sent poems away to the school magazine, I entered competitions and won
some prizes, notably in the ”Poetry India” contest.
It was at the same time I noticed the differences between some of the
other student poets and me. I felt an outsider, the psychology-mathematics-
computer science major who was just dabbling in poetry.

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 At the time, I only half-believed I was going to ”make it” as a poet, even
though I was starting to read and really enjoy poetry for the first time in
my life. I was also experimenting with fiction, but that did not come as
easily to me.
While going to graduate school, I continued with my workshop exper-
iments. I took both fiction and poetry, the latter again proving to be the
more fruitful experience.
Grad school also marked some real changes in my personal life. I con-
sider this period my real ”growing up”, and my poetry reflected it.
It was at this time I started to read aloud, both my poems and those of
others. I read ”Ciardi Himself” which became my Bible. Rhythm, diction,
image and form—not meaning or meaning—are indeed the essential tools
of the poet.
Looking for meaning by paraphrasing poetry is like trying to under-
stand words by dissecting them into letters.
I think poems are inspired by our lives, but they have to be self-sufficient
(”made things” says Ciardi) to be poems. It’s not the meaning that makes
them live, but something else altogether.
Water (Philip Larkin).
Perch (Seamus Heaney).
Omeros, Chapter XXXIII (Derek Walcott).
As long as you love words, there is hope you will love poetry.
Auden quote from Ciardi book.
There is nothing wrong with ambition. What I have discovered is that
reading poems aloud to myself, and to friends, taking the craft seriously,
and sharing my work has been more important to my feeling that I am a
poet. I’ve reached out for some opportunities, but for me, poetry is part of
my life (an essential part, of course) rather than all of it.
Poetry is not a career (quote).