Day 23: Poetry

It’s the weekend adventurers!

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I hope you all have plans for rejuvenating and exciting things. One of my favourite things is to dip into the poems of beautiful writers. I have a soul-crush on Mary Oliver’s poetry. Every word she writes seems to distill such deep and profound wisdom. One of the shortest, and deepest, is The Uses of Sorrow:

An emerging poet who blows me away is Warsan Shire. This piece from one of her poems haunts me:

So today I want us to get poetic. I know poetry is not for everyone. In fact I hated poetry at school – it seemed too pretty, too formulaic, too stilted. But then I discovered people who used poetry not for its form but for its ability to convey depth of meaning in small spaces. And I fell in love with it.

But whenever I try to write it, I stumble. It all looks too cliched. I can’t find the right words, and I judge too harshly, too quickly, before an idea has even left my pen.

But then I found Austin Kleon’s newspaper poetry.

And somehow the act of choosing a sequence of other people’s words, instead of formulating my own, set something free!

So today let’s make some blackout poems!

Day 23: Grab a marker. Find a newspaper. Make poetry. 

PS. Remember to submit your evidence (notes, photos, video, audio…anything!) and your daily questions to thirtydaysofawesome@gmail.com