I am not a full-time poet, and at times I struggle to find the desire to write. If you face this demon yourself or even if you don’t, you might be interested in psychoanalyst Adam Phillip’s essay on inspiration. Here’s an excerpt:
….And yet inspiration is a word no one is shy of using now, even though
they are not that keen to explain how it might work. It is the kind of
magic that people like to believe in, perhaps especially now, in a
culture where money can buy virtually everything else of value, and
science and technology can create or invent the things we most need.
Inspiration, in other words, is a kind of God-term; it refers to
something we think of as essential but that we can’t, or may not want
to, understand. As Eliot suggests, it is like a visitation from
something profound and incomprehensible. It reassures us, or at least
reminds us, that some of the best things about us are beyond our
control.
Whatever it is that feeds us our best lines – the gods or
God, the unconscious or the genes, the class war – it is something we
depend upon but cannot command. Like God’s grace, inspiration doesn’t
respond to our need or our greed for it. It is not a resource we can
exploit; and it doesn’t look as if, at least as yet, science or
technology can help us get more of it.
Source: Observer, March 12, 2006
Robin Reagler 