“I don’t want poetry to be just another thing to “Deal with, cope with.” Nope. The “work” is a joy. It always rewards, brings realizations and surprises. I’m a basketball coach’s son. You learn early that work is not tedium. It’s a profound form of play, joy. You learn to play the game. I loved to practice. I’d practice all day. Same with poems. And it’s not to be misunderstood as taking things lightly or just messing around or settling for. I love the revision part. It’s practice. “Let’s see if I can crossover dribble and hit a fadeaway.”
—Jack Ridl (via Instapaper)
April 2011
11 posts
“Four years later, my first poetry book is about to be published, I’m running poetry workshops in schools and working on creative writing projects in Singapore and the UK. Poetry is what I do. But more than that, I have a writing process that has allowed me to create a body of work I feel proud of. I have the confidence to say, ‘I’m a poet’.”
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Why poets in Singapore should check out Jacob Sam-La Rose’s workshop this weekend
Missed this when it was first posted (thanks to flaky hotel wi-fi). Miriam Nash - a poet I’ve mentored for the past few years - attempts to make me blush in a piece that went out prior to my workshop yesterday at the Arts House. Hm.
Play
“I have been taking photographs for 30 years now,” says Graham, a softly spoken Englishman who has lived in New York since 2002, “and it has steadily become less important to me that the photographs are about something in the most obvious way. I am interested in more elusive and nebulous subject matter. The photography I most respect pulls something out of the ether of nothingness… you can’t sum up the results in a single line. In a way, ‘a shimmer of possibility’ is really about these nothing moments in life.”
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Paul Graham: ‘The photography I most respect pulls something out of the ether’ | Art and design | The Observer (via photographsonthebrain)
At the intersection between photography and poetics…
“The best advice on writing was given to me by my first editor, Michael Korda, of Simon and Schuster, while writing my first book. “Finish your first draft and then we’ll talk,” he said. It took me a long time to realize how good the advice was. Even if you write it wrong, write and finish your first draft. Only then, when you have a flawed whole, do you know what you have to fix.”
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(via Cyberspace)
“Dream strange things and make them look like truth.”
—Nathaniel Hawthorne (via jelundberg)
Guilty admission #3422:
I can be a terrible procrastinator. And I don’t mean that in a double negative way. I mean that, sometimes, procrastination kicks my butt sideways and actually costs me cold hard cash.
I say this as a way of framing the fact that I finally got round to booking my ticket to Singapore last night. After a few hours of scouring through booking sites and contorting my flexibility around dates through configurations an acrobatic pretzel would be proud of, I settled on the best flight I could find. £688. Thank you Qantas. Hello Frankfurt - I’m looking forward to passing through you on the way back. It’ll be brief (65 minutes, fingers crossed for no delays on the flight from Singapore), but at least I’ll be able to say that we’ve met.
I’ve got a direct flight out to Changi on the 14th of April [that’s next Thursday, to underline the writer’s subtle nod to the theme of procrastination - Ed.] I’m looking forward to some immersive writing time, copious amounts of reading (Instapaper folder, Kindle backlog, dear forgotten pdfs in iBooks - let’s dance) and lots of thought provoking wandering with camera in hand. I’ll be returning to London at 7am on the 4th of May, meaning I’ll be officially back in the office on the afternoon of the 5th, though I’ll have a meeting to attend on the day I return. I did mention acrobatic scheduling, didn’t I?
So, dear interwebs, a couple of requests. For future reference, if you’ve ever used anything other that an airline’s direct booking facility, are there any alternative companies you’d recommend for booking flights? Alternative meaning “they won’t steal your money without producing a ticket or jack the price up because the cheap flight they sold you on doesn’t exist”.
Second, can anyone recommend anywhere to stay in Singapore? Not that I left it to the wire to sort out accommodation or anything. Not at all. Ta, much.
“I had no idea that sitting in the dark activates melatonin production, which in turn chemically induces sleepiness. I thought sleepiness just happened when I was tired; it turns out that all those lights and computer monitors has something to do with me staying up.”
—
Darkness Induces Sleep | David Seah
Ah. Yes. I’m sure I came across this little nugget of useful information a while back, but it never really registered before now…
I’m in the process of changing/updating some habits, so I might just add this to the mix - switch off the screens at least half an hour before bedding down, rather than sitting up at the keyboard until pass-out and face-meet-table. Good night’s sleep, here we come?
“1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it’s yours to keep for the entire period.
2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called, “life.”
3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial, error, and experimentation. The “failed” experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that ultimately “work.”
4. Lessons are repeated until they are learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.
5. Learning lessons does not end. There’s no part of life that doesn’t contain its lessons. If you’re alive, that means there are still lessons to be learned.
6. “There” is no better a place than “here.” When your “there” has become a “here”, you will simply obtain another “there” that will again look better than “here.”
7. Other people are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.
8. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.
9. Your answers lie within you. The answers to life’s questions lie within you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.
10. You will forget all this.” —Ten Rules for Being Human by Cherie Carter-Scott
2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called, “life.”
3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial, error, and experimentation. The “failed” experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that ultimately “work.”
4. Lessons are repeated until they are learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.
5. Learning lessons does not end. There’s no part of life that doesn’t contain its lessons. If you’re alive, that means there are still lessons to be learned.
6. “There” is no better a place than “here.” When your “there” has become a “here”, you will simply obtain another “there” that will again look better than “here.”
7. Other people are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.
8. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.
9. Your answers lie within you. The answers to life’s questions lie within you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.
10. You will forget all this.” —Ten Rules for Being Human by Cherie Carter-Scott
