The Gallery @ Newday 20206

Neil Axtell — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I will be serving in a new venue at the Newday youth event this year. Like last year, it's being held at the Norwich Showground in the UK.

I will be running at least one Creative Writing workshop and hosting other more informal writing times.

Unfortunately, you will have to book into the festival to see me. It's designed for young people from 12 to 18 years old, but you can come along as a server too.

For more info see - https://www.newdaygeneration.org

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My creative journey

Neil Axtell — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 13:16:54 -0400

How I learned to accept my creative expression

I started writing my poems shortly after I became a Christian in my late teens. It was a way of me processing all the changes that were going on in my life.

Not that I called them poems. In my mind (heavily coloured by the way I was taught about poetry in English Literature at school) as they did not rhyme and did not have a regular, repeating stanza structure, they could not be poems.

However, I still felt compelled to write and to share with my friends what I had written.

Over time, I started writing less and less as the demands of a growing young family grew and I could not see any point in what I was writing.

The turning point for me was in 2015/2016 when I started having random conversations with people about what creativity actually was. There was one particular set of conversations I had at the Newday youth festival with Cat, who was working the The Lounge venue. I had been prompted to start writing again, but was really struggling as, in my mind, it was not “proper” poetry.

She explained that, as we have been uniquely made by God, it should be no surprise that our creative expressions are also unique. How I write is my unique style, which will be different from everyone else. That was when I stopped beating myself up for not writing like everyone else and accepting that what I write and the way I write it is valid.

One of the great challenges with Poetry is defining what it actually is. It is often easier to define poetry by saying it is not this. That is, poetry is not prose. Poetry is an ever evolving and changing art. It almost refuses to be defined.

Using Verse (rhythmic qualities of language and rhyming words) as the primary distinction between prose and poetry is simplistic and rather old-fashioned in my opinion. This distinction makes life easier, but does not take into account that something as creative as poetry will be continually changing as its proponents experiment with its form.

T. S. Eliot himself noted, “whereas the distinction between verse and prose is clear, the distinction between poetry and prose is obscure” (Eliot T S ‘Poetry & Prose: The Chapbook’ Poetry Bookshop London 1921). Developments in modern literature, including free verse and prose poetry, have led to the two techniques indicating two ends on a spectrum of ways to compose language, as opposed to two discrete options.

I prefer a much broader definition of what poetry is that concentrates on its characteristics more than its form:

- Poetry uses forms and conventions to suggest differential interpretations of words, or to evoke emotive responses.

- It evokes meanings in addition to, or in place of, the prosaic ostensible (obvious) meaning.

- Uses figures of speech such as metaphor, simile, and metonymy to establish a resonance between otherwise disparate images - a layering of meanings, forming connections previously not perceived.

- Uses forms and conventions to suggest differential interpretations of words, or to evoke emotive responses.

- The use of ambiguity, symbolism, irony, and other stylistic elements of poetic diction often leaves a poem open to multiple interpretations.

- Writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience, in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and/or rhythm.

One of the most helpful definitions of what poetry is actually comes from The Bible Project:

Poems mainly speak through dense creative language, linking together images to help us envision the world differently.Poems use lots of metaphor to evoke your emotion and your imagination.

So, as I see it poems are written to engage the reader in an emotional exchange as well as an intellectual one. They encourage the reader to become active in the exchange of ideas not passive. They often use language that deliberately has many layers and will make their point somewhat tangentially.

Peter C. Craigie (contributor to the Word Biblical Commentary on Psalms and Jeremiah) came up with these observations about poetry in a Christian context:

Whereas the language of prose is utilized primarily towards direct communication, poetic language is characterized by a more transcendent quality. There are aspects of human experience, and aspects of the knowledge of God, for which the mundane language of prose cannot provide adequate expression. Poetry is among other things, an attempt to transcend the limitations of normal (prosaic) human language and to give expression to something not easily expressed in words – indeed, it may ultimately be inexpressible in human terms. When poetry is accompanied by music, the element of transcendence may be heightened… Poetry, like music, may be analysed and dissected, yet ultimately it must be appreciated and experienced, and to divorce the element of subjectivity from the understanding of poetry is to divest it of its power.

So, to summarise:

Poetry is verbal art that ignites our imagination and creates an emotional connection and response. It punches through the arrangement of words on the page to speak to our soul in a heart-to-heart connection.

Therefore, I am proud to announce myself a non-conformist Poet. My writing style is my own and I will not artificially manipulate and contort what I write and how I write it to fit someone else’s idea of what “proper” poetry is.

To get some idea of my heart in this regard, read my poem “Confessions of a non-conformist Poet” in my poetry collection book “Initiate - A journey begun” - https://neil-axtell.author-pages.com/books/initiate-a-journey-begun

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Neil Axtell | Updates

The Gallery @ Newday 20206

My creative journey