Formerly: Shadow Rapture; Magic Hatter (and for about all of ten minutes: Chewbacca_In_Lipstick!)
You can go here to see more daft pics of myself along with my good wife from our March holiday in North Queensland, at 'Dunk Island'....fun times :P
http://www.flickr.com/photos/39789784@N04/sets/72157620437112358
Additonal favs - seriously digging these poets. Give them your support please:
ALBATROSS
surething
After Hours
Fantecstasy
fallen
and DP 'veteran': snowdrop :D
Awesomness people...
Name: Colin Ingram
Age: 32
Date-of-Birth: October 11th 1976
Nationality: English
Born: Middleton, Greater Manchester, England
Lived: Churchlawton, Stoke-On-Trent, England (from ages 11-30)
Currently Residing: Albany, Western Australia
Marital Status: Married
Occupation: Aged Carer
Height: 5’7” (not forgetting a “half” - so I was told in 1997! But short arse anyway!)
Weight: laughs - I’ll think we’ll leave that one! :P
Eye Colour: Hazel/Green
Foot Size: UK 10
ABOUT ME:
Hey, to those that don’t know me - I’m Col. I’ve been writing on and off since I was 13; starting writing poetry (albeit woefully) in my late teens; but really took off about 2002, when I was about 25, where I developed my ’usual’ style that many people here would recognise me for.
I enjoy many things in life, in general I’m a fairly upbeat, approachable and sociable person; I like trying to make the most of things. I’m game for anything and I like to discover new hobbies and try my hand at things, when given the opportunity. Unlike many members here I had a happy childhood existence and I haven’t suffered any form of abuse (other than perhaps verbal!) during my lifetime.
You might wonder why I’m a member of ’Dark Poetry.com’ then, with its emphasis towards cutting, suicide and generally miserable themes. Well, more on that later..
Aside from writing my passions include travelling, music of all forms but particularly collecting underground Rave/Dance from the early to mid 90s, DJ-ing, cinema going, film, arts, nature and some sports.
I am a fan of English football - Manchester United being my favourite team. I also love Ice Hockey, being a Colorado Aves fan!
I also love the AFL - Aussie Rules footy; it’s manic. I don’t really have a team, although my family here is partial to the Fremantle Dockers, so I suppose I better list them!
I like to socialise with people, enjoy nights out, but I also like my own company. It’s entirely down to mood, of course.
I would like to say a huge ‘thank you’ to my friends here on DP - special mentions to Ness, Carl, Mikey, Mel, Mylissa, Kristy, Tara, Tera, Susu, Nat, Zainab, Jon, Josh, another Josh! Troy, another Jon! Bri, elisa, Kelin, JP, Matt, Luke, Darrin, Darun, Meaghan, Meg aka Muse, Cass, Amy aka Arianna, Andreas, Blake, Ben, Tetch, Jules, Gina, Nuri, Kellie, Andy, Jeff, Dylan and…crap! Anyone else I may have missed…very sorry!
I would also like to say a “gone-but-not-forgotten” mention to:
Noreen aka Paperflowers; Casey aka swampdancer; Gary aka Firefly
ABOUT MY WRITING:
Although I’m a member here, I don’t consider myself a ’dark poet’, I like however, to write about dark themes which is what lead me to the site back in early 2006.
I try to write poetry which is original, or as original I can be without inventing something entirely new.
I use a lot of symbolism, surrealism and allegory in my imagery. I also try to balance out the poetry with something for the ’ear’ as well as the eye. I mostly ’perform’ in Free Verse, although I’m not against Metrical formats, I just find them a tad more restrictive, although I enjoy the challenge of using them when the mood sees fit.
I would consider myself more a ’Speculative’ poet than anything, mainly concentrating on themes of Horror, Fantasy and Sci-Fi; although not exclusively. I also like writing fictional Dystopian, urban, contemporary writes about the world around us and all the things hidden in the cracks of the wall…
Welcome to my page and hope you enjoy the poems….feel free to browse through and comment if you feel you must. Feedback of any nature is welcome but it’s not a necessity. Comment if you want - simple as that.
Thanks to one and all. Catch you on the burger’s flipside…
SILENT STALKER WROTE on 'Rhymer':
...if you don't have to hold a meter or rhyme, then hey, you can write down whatever you want and call it poetry...that sure takes a huge chunk of the challenge out of it, doesn't it..?
MY RESPONSE:
no...not really, the challenge in free verse is to make the words not come across as prose. It's the basics in terms of when you study poetry, which I have, albeit in my own way - not by an academically approved system. In order to make it a ‘poem’ you still have to apply a certain set of techniques. Usually you have form enacting content, in other words what you see and how it's structured is the first step in 'recognising' a poem rather than a piece of prose. So sentencing, like this works better as prose because it's not broken by line enjambment, which poems use for effect and to sometimes visually enhance the poem’s theme or subject - although granted, not always. The problem is, most people, especially younger so-called ’poets’, have little or no appreciation for what’s gone before them and how the techniques of poetry have evolved over time, especially since the birth of ’Modernism’ and the 20th century, so in effect what they are writing is either bad ’free verse’ or ’prose chopped into lines’. The other side of the coin is that writing metre is stunted, ’old-fashioned’, limiting or whatever. We could all muster enough ability to write a basic rhyming poem, but how do we write an original or even effective rhyme poem without sounding 200 years out of date. That’s the challenging part, it doesn’t mean however - that it can’t be done and that many people published or otherwise have used say the sonnet form to re-create modern experiences, such as breaking up via text message etc. It all depends on how you take a certain form and make the poem out of it, of course.
So it’s not to say that rhyme is a thing of the past only, and should be relegated with the literature of time. Of course not, and formal poets still operate today, citing that poetry without any form of metre, or ’meter’ in your neck of the woods is what Frost remarked “playing tennis without the net”…in other words it took away from the aspects of the game that which you really need in order to recognise it as such, but to me traditions are there to be broken. That’s just my take on it, I write in both Free Verse and Metrical, although mainly free verse as it suits my style and the way I want to convey it. If I attempt to write in metre or with any formal design, I try to consider an original way of doing it, at least making it fit a more contemporary or interesting way of it being done.
More avant garde poets would argue that the mind doesn’t function like some tick-tock metronome or in some formal way, and present a more ’freer’ way of expressing themselves whilst still using techniques and crafts applied in structured/rhymed/metrical poems, such as alliteration, assonance, consonance, simile, metaphor, rhetorical trope, oxymorons, synecdoche, onomatopoeia, euphuism, allegories, allusions, parody, hyperbole, irregular metres, not to mention all different types of ’rhyme’, such as ‘broken’ or ‘eye’ rhyme - many things that can make up a poem - any kind of poem. In my opinion, any poem written in any particular style or way can be and (will be) good or bad; it’s just a matter of personal taste.
And sadly this argument has been going on forever, it’s actually boring now; we should all just throw sensibilities aside and enjoy reading whatever the hell we like, and stop arguing over what a poem should be and how it should or shouldn’t be written. Yes?
Amen.
