Sudden Onset Poetry

I am often surprised when someone tells me they have only been writing for a few months. Most of the people I run into on the Web have been writing as a function of their jobs for a good many years. (In my case, a GREAT many!) Years of practice in ones written language serve to underscore any creative literary effort. Still, I was caught completely off guard in 1994 when poetry started spurting out of my head. I didn't know what to do with it.

I bought a modem and finally worked up the nerve to go online and within a matter of hours found AOL's poetry boards. It may have been the wrong place but it was the right time and I learned an incredible amount from the other poets who took the time to comment on my work or who provided examples of their own light. One forum, aptly called the Cuisenart, broke me of my early attempts at metered rhyme and exposed me to such 'novel' concepts as imagery, double entendre and internal rhyme. AOL's walled garden forums fostered cliques and petty backbiting and soon heavy censorship drove many poets away. Out in the big bad Web I found less structure and focus, but no shortage of poetry to explore. I could have spent a lifetime navigating around the ever growing Poetry Webring.

During that time I found my own voice and continue to enjoy the release that poetry provides. It is not something I set out to do, nor can I stop it. It's as much a part of my life as breathing. I wanted to talk about this with other poets and established a web gathering place in which to do so. A gradual "metamorphosis" has occurred, but the casual poetry forums couldn't provide a budding writer with all the tools to help her or him grow. (Metamorphosis was the name of my poetry forum and workshop hosted by STJ Publications between leaving AOL and moving to Scotland. Loss of my income at that time forced me to give it up when the subscription ran out.) Fandango Virtual has stayed alive through various means and currently shows its face through our independent publishing company, fv books.

In those early days, many of the poetry ezines were (and still are) even more dreadful in their presentation than their content. Learning HTML programming on the fly, I published iguanaland (the hottest poetry rag south of the border). For two years I gave it as much attention as I could afford while working full time in electronics manufacturing. Nothing went into it that I didn't love, and I was never short of contributors. Editing can be a thankless job, however. Most of the submissions I received were pretty bad. The small percentage of outstanding poems provided me with material to publish, but I learned more through touching the inspired, but unpolished work that occasionally came through my hands. It became apparent that one more poetry ezine could not be as effective as a central resource which could provide fuel for the growing light. We hope our Bonfire can be that resource.

Carrie Berry
Bonfire editor