Writers often blog about writing, which I find so helpful as a blogger and a poet. I appreciate how this blog post shows that good writers can come from diverse backgrounds. The fact that I did not study poetry or creative writing in college does not invalidate my being a poet now.
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Joanne Corey 
Thanks for sharing the link, Joanne, and also for your musing about being a poet who didn’t take a formal university program in the art/craft. I’ve been delving back into my 2008 notes from David Whyte’s Clear Mind, Wild Heart workshop and found this (which your note reminded me of):
Whyte (a poet who was/is a marine zoologist by formal education!) was speaking of a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, talking about the “fierce edges of the language,” and Whyte said:
“You’d never be able to write like Hopkins in ay class or poetry workshop. It’d be trained right out of you.”
🙂
xoxo and Blessings,
Jamie
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p.s. that’s ‘any’ (not ‘ay’). xoxo
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Thanks for the story and quote, Jamie. Hopkins is a great poet – and a Jesuit .One could only hope to have a small share of his talent.
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