Poesieland

In French but not only

Welcome to my “poetic kingdom”, my online complete works.

There are currently 1099 poems in French mother tongue and 21 poems written in English.

I started expressing playing with words in French mother tongue around 1992, aged 13, then learned neoclassical versification in 1995.

If you like “regular versified” poetry, head to the French poems and enjoy them helping yourself with Google Translate.

In early 2000’s I sometimes felt inspired enough to craft poems in English, rather my mother tongue French. But the feelings are of the same kind, philosophy, a bit of tenderness, looking at my past.

There is even a single poem written in Italian.

In 2024, suddenly I wrote again one poem in English, thus enjoying finding out how I feel inspired in this case:

  • either pictures come first to mind and I feel like mentally walking into them and describe, leading to some prose but every word is carefully chosen, I often feel like writing a song,
  • or like in French words come with their sounding, rythm, and despite I know nothing about versification rules I mimic French ones.

I just read in October 2024 some online pages about English versification and it looks so different! A basic rule is about every syllable in French being an unit, and a verse has a certain amount of them, versus accented and unaccented syllables in English, where rythm leads ans dictates completeness.

French Seasons

When you visit them, you may wonder why I divided my poetic art into Seasons. First, it was an arrangement of poems by blocks of 50, trying to have a nicer reading than just linear timeline. Until I wrote less, since April 2001, timeline leads yet. And it’s fine.

The word Season isn’t innocent, it’s included in many idioms and proverbs. It lets me think of life flow, circular but going forward. Each coming year gives me renewed joys and feelings.

Poetry roles

Summarizing some thoughts I originally developed in French, poetry first has psychological roles:

  • keep memories, in a subjective and vivid way
  • help thoughts and mental battles to achieve
  • be recognized by other people and leave a trace beyond own life
  • awaken other people to their ability to express with artistic means
  • have fun, playing with language.

Have a great trip.

For any feedback: LinkedIn.

Last update of this page: 10/15/2024.

Quote

A contemporary poet, Evelina Jarosz Clark, wrote on August 4th, 2001:

A poem is like a kiss.
It begins
In the heart,
Quietly,
Like a wish,
And needs only
One other
To be complete.