Treegod:

I'm just finishing an interesting journey. You see, for a while I've been doing the bardic grade in OBOD (Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids) and I'm just writing a report on it, in the hopes I'll be getting onto the next grade, the Ovate.

It's funny, I feel like I've been a Bard for quite a while. I've written hundreds of poems, some stories and a few pieces of art. I certainly don't have a shortage of creativity. I started writing poems a lot when I first came across Paganism. I think so many people encouraged creativity and wrote poems and did other types of art, it seemed only logical for me to have a go myself.

The thing is, it wasn't just a nice pasttimes to enjoy myself with, it soon transpired that it had a deeper role to play in my life. I soon realised, that the "nice words" (and sometimes not so nice words) were ways for me to express and discover what lay within the depths of my soul, it gave me a written mirror to look at a part of myself, and learn about me and the world around me. I was also developing how I viewed the world and what I felt about it, many of my poems reveal a philosophy in the making.

One thing I came across in other people was some idea that "I can't write," something I vowed from the beginning never to do. I had the feeling that it didn't really matter because, first, they were personal and for my own enjoyment, first and foremost, and second, I was not aiming to make them look nice, I just wanted to express whatever was in me, so the form of it didn't really matter. But fortunately my rather informal style of poetry, what I call poetic prose, have been enjoyed by others. I think it's because of what the content said rather than what medium it came in.

I used to get inspired in the oddest places, like on a lawnmower, working, or late at night, when I just couldn't get to sleep as my brain would keep me awake at night, buzzing away with thoughts very loudly. So I'd have to rush to find a something to write on and with, or if I had no pen or paper, I'd often take my mobile phone out to write something there and store it. Very useful.

Nowadays, I don't write so much. I think perhaps it has to do with the fact I've reach some level within me, and I no longer need my poems to express something deep within me. I don't think I have any writers block or anything. I think my poetry was something I used whilst I was going through a very experiemental time in my spirituality, I used it to really experiement with many different thoughts and philosophies, anything from Christianity to Paganism, from Nihilism to Environmentalism. I suppose now I feel I've become more orientated in my spiritual life, I have a set of values and know which direction I want to take my life, so there's no use experimenting any more. I do more writing, like the ones in these blogs, I describe my ideas which are clearer and more focussed than before.

I came to OBOD´S Bardic grade with a tiny bit of a headstart, where I'd already developed my creative expression, self-discovery and love of nature a lot. But it¡s been good to really look at where I'm at now. Now, I'm looking forward to discovering what the Ovate grade holds and see how far I've come and how much further I can go!