Poetry Is…

I don’t see poetry as an escape or a confrontation. It is sculpture. The subject becomes the material, the words arranged are the surfaces taking shape. Visual art has always come easily. In any form, I may take my hand to it and make something passable, and occasionally, excellent. But there is too much history, too many eyes, too much expectation from others. My name is on everything I make, and everything I make is always for someone else. Photography is a business, not an art anymore. The last art I made that I was so incredibly proud of, I couldn’t show because my subject requested me not to. I love and respect her, so it wasn’t an issue, but my heart hurts at how beholden I am to others in all ways to express myself with this medium.

The accountability is staggering sometimes. Every gesture, expression, word, sentence I make - all are observed. If I make people feel great, they hire me. Their friends and family watch me work, and hire me based on that. My livelihood depends on my golden retriever persona. I don’t resent it - it’s given me the opportunity to travel, to explore remote corners of the world. To make art in a world where the grind and suffering is real is a gift never to be taken for granted. But this place…

Writing has given me a sense of freedom and voice I have been longing to use. When I was a kid, I kept a journal. My mom read it once when she was looking for something in it, and that was it - I could never write down my thoughts as they truly were ever again. Until now. Writing in a straight line isn’t easy for me, but poetry has flow and vision without rigidity. It describes light and darkness, life and death, visions and feelings. Everyone writes what they know and shares it through their lens of experience.

The beauty here is so much more authentic than the grind I have to put out on Instagram for work. I outsourced my profile to a virtual assistant because I loathe it so much, knowing that AI is callously mining every image I wrought through sweat, tears, and long days. The exhaustion felt the day after shooting a wedding cannot be described. The pain and fatigue are crippling, but I can’t say it out loud unless it’s funny or catchy. If I’m honest, the work will stop rolling in. I’m there to make other people’s lives easier.

I found this place through google and the discovery of a wonderful story that made me feel everything. I read more and more and more until my heart felt so close to bursting, I had to write something down too - to make a mark on this wall for the thrill of it.

Here I may make something and set it free into the world. The writing will be terrible to start and that’s okay. That’s how art begins. Artists cannot be scared to bring something to life. Sometimes it’s a golem, or Frankenstein’s monster, but it’s alive nonetheless. I want to write what I see and feel without a filter. To make a place where I can use lovely and obscure words, embroidering my thoughts with pop culture; thumb my nose at all convention. I’m so in love with life I could write each of you a love poem, and there would be no censure for it.

I have dark thoughts and bright ones, small joys and deep desires. To write them down and offer them here to the void is a small act of rebellion, and I will embrace it like a true pirate on the North Saskatchewan.

This is poetry to me. A place to run to, make something, confront. It’s all encompassed in the act itself. For myself, there is no need to tease it apart. Poetry feels like shedding old skin and revelling in a fresh form. The limbs are awkward, the flesh is sensitive and there is life.