How does one start a poetry blog? What does one say to commemorate the moment of unveiling, of revelation? I do not know, and yet I cannot help but feel that something must be said. A setting of intention or a laying of foundation.

After all, must not all stories have a beginning?

And yet, I find myself struggling with speechlessness. Here lies poet, dumb. An entanglement which almost seems fitting: as few things define the artist’s creative journey so infamously as the struggle against emptiness, against the dearth of ideas that inevitably comes at the moment when the pressure to produce is greatest. At the moment when one’s own expectations are highest.

At the moment when one declares oneself to be poet and begins a blog.

At the beginning.

And at every subsequent beginning. At the moment of putting pen to paper to begin anew. A process that repeats inevitably again, and again, and again. Delineating the rhythm of an artist’s creative footsteps.

Thus begins my march.

The determined placement of one foot in front of the other. The journey into a vast and entirely uncharted new space. Here begins my journey into self and out of self, a trip that begins and ends in a single moment. A moment in which I press “Publish”.

A moment in which I plant my flag in the ground and declare the country of “Poet” in my own name.

A moment in which I claim my right to becoming something more than I am.

A moment like this one.

Welcome to my beginning.