Inscapes

<p>I have always loved poetry-reading it and writing it. During an active teaching career I was busy with teaching course development and writing critical literary articles. Now and then there was a winged urge to write a poem-and I did. In retirement I got busy with deep research into the life of Mahatma Gandhi's wife Kasturba Gandhi. Then too the spontaneous urge to write poems continued.</p><p></p><p>A variety of outward remembered visual or contemplative stimuli triggered the writing of a poem. Outward stimuli take me into inward journeys so I call them inscapes-not landscapes seascapes or escapes but inward journeys of the soul.</p><p></p><p>For me a poem begins spontaneously from the heart. Then pondered upon and augmented with detail it finds its own prosodic form. Sometimes it is expressed in free verse sometimes in stanzaic form. Occasionally it is a haiku. No matter what the content of a poem happens to be for me it is a spiritually uplifting experience-a happy one.</p><p></p><p>As for my line drawings they are spontaneous too expressing my love of life. In between the poems I have also placed some of my line drawings which I believe enhance the pleasure of the reading.</p><p></p>