Genus Irritabile Vatum: Why You Should Write Cathartic Poetry
THis article was originally featured on Brúsgar de rígheacht’s Substack.
Within my last substack, I briefly mentioned cathartic poetry as best describing what I do. Within this substack, I intend to fully explain what it is, and lay out reasons for you to do (at least some of) it.
If you search on Google for the definition of catharsis, it will define it as "the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions." When I say cathartic poetry, I am not simply using that definition. To me, cathartic poetry can be far more broad. When I write a poem, I tend to do so to record my emotions and thoughts. I do this so that I can rationalise them, giving them form allows me to properly digest them, and so that I can pull it out from my mind and be relieved of the excesses of emotions. This doesn't necessarily have to be a strong emotion, although that does often provide the best inspiration for poetry.
Writing poetry is something I have done for myself, but if you need a greater reason for it, take this. Poetry is central to the Gael. Throughout my research for this article, I have found far too many great quotes demonstrating its necessity in preserving stories and cultural knowledge during the years of oppression by the English.
One meets occasionally in out of the way corners men who never knew the pleasures of reading, to whose fingers a pen would, perhaps, be the clumsiest of possible implements; yet they are often the repositories of a priceless store of songs and story committed to memory line by line from the rude rhymings of these village bards. How much more preferable it is to listen to one of those simple rural songs than to any of the imported abominations of the nearest large town we shall not pause to say. Whatever their imperfections, they are in a sense true to their surroundings, and possess all the flavour of the mountains and the moors of Ireland.
- Our Peasant Poetry
I'm not demanding that you try to surpass the bards of old, creating national treasures. What I suggest is, to imitate them in some way. They used poetry to preserve knowledge and pass it down to the next generation. In an age of such uncertainty, rather than trying to outsource help to self-proclaimed gurus (who can be helpful, but ultimately tend to repeat the same few points), we should seek to preserve knowledge of our own emotions and hardships through poetry, reminding us of solutions for them.
You might question whether you will actually see any tangible benefit from writing poetry. I was quite interested in seeing if there was anything about this online, specifically in relation to cathartic poetry, and I was pleasantly surprised. I found several strong personal reflections on the benefits of cathartic poetry, which I will quote at some stage, alongside an article written by some people far more qualified in the field than me. From this study, I have three segments I felt were fitting to reference here;
“The act of reflection allows for an interpretation of our narratives, especially the ones we keep suppressed and often take for granted or dismiss as unimportant.
When someone writes a healing poem, there is an abundance of sincerity and emotional influence in it, and as such these verses are best understood from the motivation behind them. Structure, technicality, and poetic tradition become secondary to the process of expressing one’s experience and emotions for a primarily cathartic purpose.
The cathartic poem promotes movement from the inside to the outside, moving a person to open up to a new reality, releasing words onto the page; it is an act of unburdening instead of coiling in on oneself.”
- Cathartic Poetry: Healing Through Narrative
I fully agree with their description of cathartic poetry. Trying to force in additional poetic techniques to seem, well, more poetic isn't necessary. You put *yourself* into the poem, and everything else follows. Its structure is whatever flows naturally from your head. This will naturally result in some poetic feel, as the uneven rush of thoughts leads to run on lines and enjambment. That is ultimately not the most important part, but it should be noted.
While I do occasionally think that I have somewhat gaslit myself on the benefits of poetry, the words of others push back on that. Take Sylvia O'Hara. Whilst researching for this article, I came upon her writing for the Indiependent, which I enjoyed and felt was a good example of the benefits I am trying to illustrate.
It is not just reading poetry that has been cathartic, but writing it too. In fact, writing poetry has often been an immensely healing process for me, enabling me to dispense my emotions onto something tangible — words on a page — allowing them to appear clearer and less disorientated. It encourages a process of mindfulness, whereby my body is solely focused on writing down emotions that otherwise would remain suppressed inside. Often the only way I am able to express my innermost thoughts is through writing them into some poetic configuration, whether that be scribbled down on a notebook, or the notes section of my phone. Even if I do nothing more than throw that small, crumpled piece of paper away, it has not been a practise in futility. There is a dual benefit in writing and reading poetry. Disciplining your thoughts and emotions into a poetic form allows them to feel less overwhelming, and by exploring the deep crevices of our minds, we can liberate reserves of creativity and power we may not have been aware of.
I'll relate this back to myself to try to discuss. You can't really describe many emotions in a way that does them justice solely through your mind. There's too much nuance to try to juggle. Looking through several poems of my own, I gave a glance through 'To Pine.' It is something I feel is far too personal to share at present, but I will discuss it in this context. The poem is about the yearning for love and companionship many of us experience, but through its words, it carries so much more information. The poem's motif is the empty space next to me in bed as I lay there late at night, and yet through its 90 words I can distinctly picture the scene as I wrote it, and it reminds me of far more than just that central theme. It discusses the immense yearning I felt, yet it also details just **what** I was yearning for, beyond vague 'companionship.' Just as people say "a picture can tell a thousand stories," I feel that a poem does the same. By nature, it has a wealth of depth and nuance. Poetry will create layers beneath your literal meaning that you can only see after reading your work multiple times over.
To be able to store events, thoughts, feelings, scenarios, hardships, etc in such a detailed and permanent way should seem like a no brainer in comparison to the fickle and unreliable thing that our mind is.
That durability should of course be another incentive. Poetry can be a far easier pathway into the annals of history than becoming a playwright or an author, although it does also strengthen your writing skills if you wish to pursue them. Poetry doesn't force you to grasp complex structures, build out a fleshed world, design character dynamics, etc. Poetry just needs you to briefly tell a story. If you can capture something that truly resonates with people, you will be remembered.
“An air is more lasting than the voice of the birds. A word is more lasting than the riches of the world.”
- Eleanor Hull.
Before I try to shift from solely discussing the benefits of poetry for you, I will present one more example, this time from Stephanie Wytovich through Southern New Hampshire University's website.
“Poetry encourages us to put words to feelings that we can’t otherwise describe." This quote, by itself is a strong summation of what cathartic poetry should be. With context, it becomes so much more impactful. Alongside this, Stephanie discusses why she writes cathartic poetry, the same reason as myself, to help digest emotions and experiences.
“I was having a hard time working through some of my trauma, and they mentioned that exploring my emotions and working out some of the images I was stuck on might be beneficial to helping me process and heal."
Cathartic poetry allows you to approach any issue that besets you from another, more creative angle, possibly showing some solution to a problem or a way to understand it.
When it comes to finding a way to relate poetry back to the Gael, and to motivate you to write it yourself, quoting Thomas Davis' ingenious literary output seems like the most obvious path. Within Ballad Poetry of Ireland, there are several statements by him that should serve to push you to write it. Here, he argues for the importance of national poetry.
“National poetry is the very flowering of the soul—the greatest evidence of its health, the greatest excellence of its beauty. Its melody is balsam to the senses. It is the playfellow of childhood ripens into the companion of his manhood, consoles his age. It presents the most dramatic events, the largest characters, the most impressive scenes, and the deepest passions in the language most familiar to us. It shows us magnified, and ennobles our hearts, our intellects, our country, and our countrymen—binds us to the land by its condensed and gem-like history, to the future by examples and by aspirations. It solaces us in travel, fires us in action, prompts our invention, sheds a grace beyond the power of luxury round our homes, is the recognised envoy of our minds among all mankind and to all time.”
This is a rather romanticised image of poetry for what most of us, myself included, can realistically achieve. Even with me trying to negate the importance of *all* poetry to some extent, Yeats and Heaney wouldn't seem so masterful without the 'Instagram poetry' to compare them to. And, having read far too much of the utter slop that gets passed off as poetry, I should say that anyone can surpass that. Davis has an incredible way with words that I shouldn't seek to denigrate too much with my own commentary, but I want to further emphasise his first point - "poetry is the very flowering of the soul." In an Irish sense, this cannot be more true. Take Yeats for an example. If you track his evolution as a poet - from a Romantic to disillusionment, and plot it against Irish history, it tells a dire tale. During the late 1800s and early 1900s, Yeats is positive. There is immense cultural and language revival ongoing. As he becomes more involved directly with the movement, his style begins to shift. By 1913, you have the Dublin lockout (although not originally linked), and the opposition to the Dublin art gallery. Yeats responds with the despondent and bitter September 1913, giving form to the hurt Ireland's soul was experiencing by describing a greedy and soulless country. By writing poetry throughout the course of your life, you will chart not only your own change, but the changes of your society, and your nation.
Poetry doesn't have to serve as an act of preservation though. Through our bardic tradition, and those who wrote under British rule, poetry served as an act of rebellion.
"The Bard still fronts the victor with a smile
And breaks in song the chains nought else can break."
To a Lady Who Wondered ‘Why All Irish Poetry was “Rebel” (Roger Casement)
Poetry can rebel in many ways. You can satirise that which you oppose, ridiculing it. You can dissect it to pull out its flaws. Hyperbole highlights mistakes and problems. For them, poetry was used to rebel against British oppression. You could look to your life now, find some injustice, oppression, or perversion of society around you. That can be undermined through the written word of poetry. Even that can be attributed to cathartic poetry, as it gives a release for some of the pent up bitterness that comes from observing the numerous issues around us.
To draw from our beloved white cat, I can discuss the words of Giolla Brighde Mac Con Midhe (c. 1210 – c. 1272), hereditary Ollamh to the Cenél nEógain.
“If poetry were suppressed, O people, so there was neither history nor ancient lays, every man for ever would die unheard of except for the name of everybody’s father ...
There would be lasting evil consequences ...
the forgetting of their ancestry such that they knew not the roots from which they derive”
Poetry as a means of preserving genealogical records isn't something I'm familiar with, nor do I imagine there are many examples of it out there, but it does serve to further harp on the point of poetry being vital to the being of the Gael. Additionally, the quote allows me to briefly discuss genealogy. In a way, it is poetic. When you deconstruct parts of it, it can be beautiful. You can find trends in the family of names that you didn't know were common. To apply this to myself. My middle name is the same as both of my grandfather's first names. That was something I could've known without genealogy. What I didn't know was there are another two examples of it that I have found just a wee bit further up the family tree. Then, for my first name. It's not a particularly Irish one, and it's unique in the family. Its Irish translation however, is the same as a name shared by another 5 men in my family tree, four of which are in my direct paternal line. Genealogy is also poetic in the sense that you can almost revive people. There is that saying that the second death is when someone says your name for the last time. I have undone that for 4 generations, all of whom sacrificed to get me here, and deserve a spot in my mind for that.
To try to come at the quote from a more metaphorical angle, I can argue that "There would be lasting evil consequences...the forgetting of their ancestry such that they knew not the roots from which they derive" could be interpreted as meaning that without poetry a culture withers and dies. This is in keeping with Davis' words on the matter, linking poetry to a nation's soul. Without poetry fighting to keep Ireland's soul, we would have been subsumed by the English. In an age of multiculturalism and globalism, poetry can be used to ensure Ireland still has a distinct soul and culture.
While I am begging you, the reader, to humour me, and write some poems of your own, I must ask that they are not something you force. To draw again from Our Peasant Poetry.
Art in its truest guise should not attempt to ornament, or disguise, it should imitate Nature, else it is not natural; it has nothing to appeal to what is common to natural man.
Write about what comes to you. If that means you have to sit under a tree watching salmon leap in a river for inspiration, do that. If it means laying on the grass and gazing at the passing moon, do that. Equally, if it means sprawling across a couch or a bed, do that. Whatever comes to you naturally is whatever should flow onto the page or the document or file.
I will leave you with a call to action from Thomas Davis, again in Ballad Poetry of Ireland.
"Our duty arises where our knowledge begins"
Come at poetry from where your knowledge begins. Make something beautiful out of what you know, or what you feel. It will make you feel better, and it could make Ireland feel better.