POETRY, CREATIVE WRITING AND SUICIDE by Jamiu Ahmed

 POETRY, CREATIVE WRITING AND SUICIDE 

"Is Creative Writing and Poetry synonymous to suicide?"

"Why are Creative Writers and Poets Suicidal?"

The above rhetorical questions soliciting answers have been a viral subject of discourse among the Writers and the non-Writers across social media due to the rate of Suicide among the Creative most especially the Poets. This discourse has lead to another question such as:

“Is Poetry the art of the dead alive?”

Over the millennium, Poetry has been a viable tool of self-expression and it's the art of total freedom to be able to convey thoughts, emotions and meanings using a wide variety of artistic language and style. 

Poetry deals with emotions, and Creative Writers and Poets try to connect with their innermost consciousness with deep reflection, rumination and thoughtfulness known as "Musing" just to make the poem relatable. 

For instance; writing a sad poem, the Poet would want to enter a pensive mood and wear the poem to make people connect to his / her feelings so they can feel what a sad person feels. It's just like saying the Poet is touching fire to feel how it feels to touch fire before letting people know how it feels to touch fire. This often comes with the ability to feel your pains and other people's pains, then expressing and communicating that pains in a few words and lines for others to feel what the Poet has felt. 

The problem comes when the Poet no longer knows how to harness and manage that deep reflective mood, he/she will start sinking his or her depth and everything will start looking gloomy when the only realm the Poet could reflect on is the dark side of life and this becomes extreme gradually because the "sadness musing" has become a reality for the Poet. The brooding has moved from his / her thoughts to words then habits, which finally shape into his or her personality. The Poet has let the dark side get hold of him/her. He or she has become a sadist from the consecutive days of thinking and writing from a melancholic state. 

Since the sober state has slowly moved from the Poet's subconscious mind to state of consciousness, they tend to write in dark shade unconsciously, so when life happens, such as a family or relationship break up or domestic abuse, or financially challenged, they become depressed and start being suicidal because they have lost interest in their self and everything from the initial "sadness musing" and melancholic state, bit by bit, they fold inward and dissociate from people and things, till they finally kiss the cloud to satisfy their lust for the darker side of life. Some often write about their depressed state without the audience knowing or noticing the author is the main character in question and some don't but only left clues of their death in their suicide note. 

However, some circumstances and happenstances revolve around depression, suicide and being suicidal, because they are no definite pattern, causes vary, and the forte varies, too. 

Some schools of thought argued that the art can't be separated from the Poet, some argued that the art is independent of the Poet persona, though his art may reflect his personality, the truth is the art isn't responsible for the persona being suicidal because the Poet persona has another life outside the art, which may be responsible for the mental stress, anxiety and depression. 

Poetry as a communicative art is meant to purge the audience reading through the emotional lines of the Poet and it's also meant to heal the Poet for letting out his or her heavy heart through his / her art.