Woe is

mindshare was recipient of Arts SA’s Strategic Community Partnership: Community Grant for 2014 working with the Media Resource Centre and Access 2 Arts. As part of this project mindshare invited poets, writers and individuals with lived experience of a mental health issue to submit poetry to a competition called When words come to life.

Our judge Jude Aquilina then selected 8 poems from a diverse range of applicants which were turned into digital stories during a workshop run by the Media Resource Centre.

Woe is by Sarah AGNEW

Ugh.
What is this insipid
dribble from my pen,
which has not become, today,
a wand to wave magic
over page, a needle to weave
fabric, brush to paint picture,
complex and beautiful;

I spin only webs, this jumbled
tumbling of metaphor sets
a trap, I trip
on my self-indulgent insipidity –

do I cap
it here, replace the lid and stop
the flow of woes and pity
so unpretty? –
or do I let it run,
run on through the weak and useless
ink until page and pen resemble

the emptiness
I feel?

by Sarah Agnew
Part of the When words come to life competition 2014.