At some point during 1996, I saw a news article about the Newbury bypass protests: pictures of houses built in the trees, home-made tents on the ground and banners asking for protection rather than the destruction of more than 10,000 mature trees. I told my parents that this is what I wanted to do when I was older...I never managed to make the ambition of my twelve-year-old self a reality. By the time I got older, the certainty and confidence of youth had been washed away and I found myself within a place of no ambition...
But things change, people grow, and ambition is certainly not singular.
Over the last few years, I have reconnected with my ambition, compiling a mental list of things I’d like to eventually do: learn Latin, take a photography course, travel, own a small vegan coffee shop selling delicious vegan treats, write great poetry. They are things that will never bring a great deal of wealth, but is not my ambition to be wealthy. Yes, it would be nice to be comfortable, but if I were driven by money then I probably wouldn't have ever wanted to be a poet...
As Robert Graves once said: There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money, either.
Perhaps some are surprised that (in terms of poetry) my ambition is to write great poems rather than achieve publication. But in a world of internet, ebooks and social network sites publication isn’t an affirmation of quality or greatness... Yes, to have a pamphlet / collection of my poetry published would be wonderful, but to be able to write great poetry would – in my eyes, at least – be a far greater achievement...
Maybe it is an unachievable ambition – but it is one I’ll follow, despite its lack of guarantees. Thank you for reading,Lara
