“But I don’t have the time to read,” you say. The solution is similar to the ten minutes of writing—read a little bit every day. Maybe you read three poems per day. When you feel that mythical disease of writer’s block taking over, plop a healthy portion of books around you, sit down in the middle of them, and let the books talk to you. Pick up a book, flip to a line or a poem, and read it. Wait until you feel inspired. It probably won’t ever take you more than five tries to find the poem you need to start writing. Many poets will sometimes borrow a form or title or subject matter from another poet and write their own spin on it, crediting the other poet by writing “After Pablo Neruda” or “After Lucille Clifton.” Maybe an image in another’s poem reminds you of an image in your own life. But you must read. As Stephen King said, “You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.”
To be a writer who doesn’t read is to be a chef who doesn’t eat. A surgeon afraid of blood. A fisherman in the desert dust. An interpreter who knows only one language. A preacher without faith. A painter with only beige. To be a writer who doesn’t read is to be an astronaut in a world without stars.
GET INSPIRED
“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
—HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Get inspired. To do that, sometimes you have to live a little. Take a different route to work. Instead of fighting a parking ticket online, go to court. Don’t go to the self-checkout line at Home Depot. Talk to someone. Instead of texting, call. Show up at someone’s house. Say yes to an invitation. Do something different each day, and open your eyes to experiences. Read newspapers and essays. Ask your family and friends questions. Look at old photographs. Lasso your memories. See movies, listen to music. Go to a museum. Break up with your boyfriend! Allow yourself to be inspired. Once you start writing and reading every day, you will begin to think in poetics. Your world will turn from a routine into an opportunity for writing. Suddenly, tying your shoes becomes poetic when you are living the writer’s life. Keep your mind open to what can move you to poetry.
KNOW YOUR PRACTICE
Play around with where you write to find where you feel the most comfortable. Maybe it’s locked away in a room in your house. Maybe it’s at the crowded coffee shop where you have nonstop access to chatter and caffeine. Maybe you’re best writing in bed before you fall asleep, or as soon as you wake up. Notice the natural rhythms of your creativity. Tap into the time of day, the place, the details of your day that awaken your muse. When you begin writing, pay attention to what supports your flow and what clogs it up. Do you feel more inspired to write when you have the thought, “So many people are going to read this”? Or when you have the thought, “No one is ever going to read this”? Who are you writing for?
Enjoy your materials. Maybe you have a favorite pen that writes like icing on a cake. Maybe you have to type your poems on your computer, with the brightness turned all the way down, so that you can hardly see what you are writing. Maybe you need to wear a fake mustache and lensless glasses and type on a typewriter from the 1940s to really feel like a writer. Maybe you speak into a voice recorder on long drives by yourself, and write it down later. Joan Didion needed to write with a bottle of Coca-Cola each morning. Find your materials. Trust your style.
IT’S OKAY TO SUCK
There isn’t anyone in the world who doesn’t write things that don’t suck ever. Your favorite poet has awful drafts and bizarre metaphors too. They just don’t publish those, so we don’t see them, and then we put the poet on this writerly pedestal of not-sucking. But we all suck sometimes, and that suck is important to the process. Writing is sort of like turning on an old faucet you haven’t used in a long time. At first it runs all brown and rusty and gross (and sucky), but if you keep it on, the water runs clear. Practice doesn’t make perfect in the case of writing, but it certainly makes you suck way less hard, and way less often.
But it’s okay to suck sometimes. Your failure is encouraged. It means you tried. Perfection actually does not benefit our mental health and growth. Many writers will tell you that your goal should be to collect one hundred rejection slips from publications. No child walks perfectly on the first try. This process, like any other, is full of stumbles and falls and slips and whoopsies that will absolutely lead to your evolution. Fail on!
TO CONCLUDE
You deserve to have poetry in your life. To read things that delight you. To write things that set you free. To notice the poetry in the mundane, until the mundane becomes fascinating. Remember: You, too, are the poem, and it is never too late for your heart to change in the direction of more magic, more beauty, more expansion, more purple, more wonder.
Love,
Megan Falley & Andrea Gibson
(two poets whose hearts have indeed been changed by poetry forever)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The quotes on pages 12 and 13 come from a survey of acquaintances in person and online.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks to Derrick C. Brown, poet and publisher at Write Bloody Publishing, for being a rad and mighty advocate for spoken word dancing on the page. And to all the poets who have changed our hearts.
ANDREA GIBSON leaped into the forefront of the spoken word poetry movement in 2008 when they won the first-ever Woman of the World Poetry Slam. Since then they have headlined prestigious performance venues all over the country and abroad, authored four collections of poetry and recorded seven full-length albums. Their poetry focuses on gender norms, politics, social reform, and the struggles of the LGBTQ community. Born in Calais, Maine, they now reside in Longmont, Colorado.
MEGAN FALLEY authored four collections of poetry before she turned thirty years old. Her chapbook, Bad Girls, Honey: Poems About Lana Del Rey, was the winner of the Tired Hearts Chapbook Prize. She has appeared on national television to recite her work and is the creator of the online poetry course Poems That Don’t Suck. Focusing on body image, queer issues and celebrations, and relationships, Falley’s work is vibrant in both books and theaters. Born and raised in New York, she moved to Colorado for love.
How Poetry Can Change Your Heart Page 5