Leaving school and moving to London was a strange time that had strange creative consequences. My English teachers had chosen T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land as an A Level text. The abundance of references to historic events, mythology, high and low culture, all thrown together in a modern epic that mangled poetic convention, had a non-conformist allure. Lines of existential doubt reverberated in my memory as I got into the capital. This lead to meandering, quasi-lyrical scribblings that I stashed away and, for the most part, never finished. I didn’t have a great deal of faith in my artistic abilities and if questioned on the matter, was shy and evasive. How poetic.

In retrospect, modernist literature – of which Eliot’s poem is a prime example – probably didn’t help my own creative development. For those unfamiliar with the term, modernism was a movement characterised by uncertainty in religion, science, and art: the traditional beacons of hope and progress. To put it in a timeframe, it lasted roughly from the turn of the 20^th century to the outbreak of WW2. In this atmosphere of ambiguity, established forms of artistic expression were shunned. “Make it new” Ezra Pound famously insisted, which more or less translated to ripping up the rulebook as far as orthodox meter and structure was concerned. Bye bye Byron, sayonara Shelley.

Confusingly for me, teachers and academics held up works such as The Waste Land as the pinnacle of poetic achievement in the last century. I’m still not sure whether to take it seriously or laugh at this pretentious literary gag. I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that its appeal lies in its vagueness. It gives scholars carte blanche to pontificate and extrapolate no end of obscure interpretations. But it’s one thing using it as a launch pad for far-fetched theories; as poetic inspiration it’s a bit hopeless. How do you know if it’s really any good? And supposing you compose something similar, can you honestly claim that there’s genius in obscurity? At least a sonnet or sestina brings the certainty of being complete. You may not pull it off with Shakespearean aplomb but there’s a satisfaction in finishing the damn thing all the same.

So it was that I abandoned my modernist ways and had a go at some more structured stuff. It was a step in the right direction but I still wasn’t sure I wanted to fess up about these extra-curricular endeavours. My solution was to hide a few of the slightly less cringe-worthy pieces in a website that I then never spoke about or shared with anyone. That now seems a bit silly given the hours that went in to building it. And with a name like morenormalthanaverage.com there wasn’t a hope in hell that someone would chance upon my cache of second-rate sonnets. Despite the lack of poetic flair, the site itself is a nice concept – designed for secrecy and to deter would-be critics from actually accessing the content. Since its conception 5 years ago I’ve hardly touched it. Perhaps in time I’ll add to it, although if I do it’s unlikely to be something I’ll publicise. Give it a try.

P.S. It’s not really touch-screen compatible.