Poetry in waiting

Someone at work asked me if I was writing poetry at the moment, and I almost said yes. The truth is that although I haven't written a word, I can feel poetry bubbling and fermenting inside me, getting ready to be written. On the other hand, I have nothing to show for any of my ideas (odd how this parallels my pregnancy - the baby is kicking but the movements can't be seen or felt from the outside yet) and I've always taken note of Miroslav Holub's 'Interview With A Poet':

You are a poet? Yes, I am.
How do you know? I have written a poem.
When you wrote the poem, it means you were a poet. But now?
I shall write another poem some day.
Then you will again be a poet.

So no bandying the word 'poet' about again just yet...

The signs are encouraging though. So far I haven't suffered much with the famous 'mushy pregnancy brain'; if anything my brain feels more active. I used to be most inspired - although often in a hectic, undirected way - just before and during my period, and pregnancy seems to be providing an extended version of this. And I'm trying to *read* as much as I can now, because I suspect that once the baby's born I'll be entirely occupied with being and doing, rather than judging and reflecting. And everything I'm reading is coloured slightly, excitingly, by the perspective of pregnancy. As Rachel Cusk says in her book 'A Life's Work':

"my experience of reading, indeed of culture, was profoundly changed by having a child, in the sense that I found the concept of art and expression far more involving and necessary, far more human in its drive to bring forth and create, than I once did."

Weeks: 20+3