and never more true, it seems, than now. So how to get through the next month, which starts with April Fools’ Day (although few of us have found much to laugh about) and ends with a Royal Wedding (the budget of which could have easily funded the many arts organisations that have essentially been put out of business by yesterday’s ACE cuts)?
The answer is to write a poem a day. Yes, April is NaPoWriMo, National Poetry Writing Month. I realise that writing a poem a day won’t change the state of the world, but if nothing else, it will keep us sane. And so, to get the ball rolling, a reminder of why it is we write poetry in the first place, courtesy of Aristotle. Perhaps his third object is the one we should pay close attention to in this bleak spring:
The poet being an imitator, like a painter or any other artist, must of necessity imitate one of three objects – things as they were or are, things as they are said or thought to be, or things as they ought to be.