Tuesday, 12 July 2011
From My Notebook - On Being A Poet Today
..have more depth than surface. Be an artist rather than appearing to be. So many 'artists' have the right laptop & phone, a shiny website/facebook page etc, they hang with the right people and talk the right kind of talk, but don't work on being rigorous and honest and developing their poetry... and god forbid they should spend years of their lives dedicated to reading poetry for its own sake, searching ideas out which feed the spirit and challenge the inner world. Is a life of surface and fakery going to satisfy you? Your friends will slap you on the back but you'll know the truth. Being the artitst/person you honestly are - moving forward tiny step by tiny step in becoming.. What an adventure there is to be had if we will just put one foot in front of the other.. We're going to shake and wobble and get things wrong, and sometimes we'll get things right, Others will always appear to be doing better than us in moving ahead with the game.. but please ask yourself, is the world of appearances going get you where you live? It is quite a thing to be a poet, an artist.. for real I mean.. and that is good.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
you re so rght siddique:)
An excellent post, John. So often people turn their noses up at you for talking about being an artist, as if that is something to be embarrassed about or as if you're being full of yourself if you say it. But we artists give up a lot for being this way, and generally, we can't help it. We should embrace it and, as you say, really live it in whatever way that means for us. I think being an artist means seeing the world in a different way, and daring to act on that vision. At least that's my view today from the other side of the pond :-)
Post a Comment