I like this quote from Michael Longley (a poet) – courtesy of Rob Walker’s Art of Noticing newsletter:
“One of the marvelous things about poetry is that it’s useless. It’s useless. ‘What use is poetry?’ people occasionally ask, in the butcher shop, say. They come up to me and they say, ‘What use is poetry?’ And the answer is, ‘No use.’
“But it doesn’t mean to say that it’s without value. It’s without use, but it has value. It is valuable.
“And the first people that dictators try to get rid of are the poets and the artists, the novelists and the playwrights. They burn their books. They’re terrified of what poetry can do. … Poetry encourages you to think for yourself.”
The picture is from the Drawn and Quarterly book by Anders Nilsen ‘Poetry is Useless’ – I’d like to read that one day!
25th Mar 2024 – Although I didn’t really write much myself here I submitted this to the Living Poetry page.
Return Voyage
All the striving, the work, the living
Has brought me to my lifelong dream
What now that I have nothing to be giving
Just floating by, on my way downstream
What for me? A challenge, just because?
The journey is far better than the arrival
A brain stimulation, a stress all a-buzz
Life – is it anything more than my survival?
A challenge now I must myself set
To instil my life with some meaning
I’ve found myself before and never forget
I must no longer neglect my dreaming
A journey like this may only be complete
On return to the place that I came
Those from which I ran in defeat
Though I know I will never return the same
Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful to the colony of ants that ingeniously built a huge nest behind our washing machine without us noticing. It’s amazing to see – they bought in bits of mud to build the nest, millions and millions of tiny pieces to make a huge pile in the corner. Unfortunately for them, we are going to remove it this afternoon!
1994ever 