National Poetry Day| Identity

  This week's prompt is: The Body.

And, coincidentally, or not, today in the UK is:

This year's National Poetry Day theme, 'Identity', invites us to explore through poetry one of the crucial issues and talking points in today's culture. What is identity? How do we develop it? How do we define it? And how are we defined by it?

Identity is a big issue for me, since illness peeled mine away over the past decade, and I've been forced to find, or build, another.

Is identity how others see us, or how we see ourselves? Is it neither? Both?

"Identity is perceived externally but we can only exist within it. There are many meanings of identity and many ways of presenting/ representing identity. Identity as image. Identity as biological. Identity as fantasy. Identity as labels. Identity as concept. Identity as spiritual. Identity as non-identity. Identity as breathing. Identity as voice. Identity as creativity. With the advances in technology, it is easy to shift and change identities; create the person we really want to be without a witness to confirm or contest the creation...".

Frieda Hughes says:

... I believe that poetry, more than any other form of writing, exposes us - even if we hide ourselves in allegory - because real poetry is sourced from our inner core, which is where I believe we also find our true identity.

So, I would be found in my poems, if this is so, and if they are real. As I hope they -- at least some -- are.

I did make an attempt to respond to this prompt, by gathering together the 'self-portrait' efforts I've made for various projects in the past few years:

See my Tabblo>

You will notice that there is very little body there, and even face is somewhat camouflaged. I noticed.

I made another try, focused on the identity I've been developing since I began blogging in 2004:

See my Tabblo>

Both of these are much more concerned with the head than the body; no surprise, I suppose, from someone whose body hurts most of the time. Nor from someone whose body has morphed from desirable to despicable, by cultural standards, several times in a yet unfinished lifetime.

I find that I don't have a body or identity poem in me today (perhaps later) but for poems by Poetry Society members on the theme of Identity, click here, and for poems by Poetry Thursday members on the theme of The Body, click here.

Even poetry insufficient? Then, in another fine British tradition, try TEA.

Comments

[Jen]

I really like the line with the hair in your collage: this heavy braid the only remnant of my youth. I've always wished for long hair but mine, alas, is thin and slow-growing. How nice to have hair you can hold and think that it's been with you for years.