The Pulse: June 2023

The Barbie poem, send your name into space, and love poems in the midst of a train wreck

From Margot Robbie’s interview with Vogue, we learn this: Barbie director Greta Gerwig wrote a poem to help her land the coveted gig. The power of poetry strikes again, because, well she made it and it’s the most hyped-up film of the summer.

Gerwig and Baumbach did share a treatment, Robbie adds: “Greta wrote an abstract poem about Barbie. And when I say ‘abstract,’ I mean it was super abstract.” (Gerwig declines to read me the poem but offers that it “shares some similarities with the Apostles’ Creed.”)

The Griffin Prize for Poetry 2023 has just been announced and this year, the $130,000 prize goes to American poet Roger Reeves for his collection, Best Barbarian. Notably, this year is the first year that the grand prize has gone just to a single poet. As the prize was established in Canada by Scott Griffin, a now-retired businessman magnate in the Canadian manufacturing industry, previously the $130k was split between a Canadian category and an International category. Now it’s one prize to find the best poetry collection in the entire world. For those who aren’t familiar with the Griffin Prize, it’s the largest monetary reward for poetry in the entire world. $130,000 is certainly not the standard, of course, because the vast majority of poets struggle to make money solely off poetry.

Over in Wales, the third statue of a real woman ever in the country has been erected and it’s of Sarah Jane Rees also known as Cranogwen, a Victorian-era poet and ship’s captain…and journalist. Talk about a slashie.

New Jersey (and vicinity) friends: Monica Ong, a visual poet, is exhibiting Planetaria from now until September 3 at the Hunterdon Art Museum in Clinton, New Jersey. “The gallery space affords one way to open up new possibilities of reading.”

In Toronto, Canada: An exhibition on the life of 13th century Persian poet, Rumi. At the Aga Khan Museum until September 1.

And for readers in Paris, France: From now until July 15 at L'Avant Galerie Vossen, go see Exhibition POEME SBJKT, an exhibition curated by poetry x emerging tech pioneers, TheVerseVerse.

Musician Paul Kelly’s latest album was titled “Poetry” (not very creative but I see the point—there’s also a women’s retail store called Poetry, and people really do like to call things poetry). He’s also part of the call to promote poetry to young people, helping to create a classroom resource for secondary school students to discover poetry. Read more here.

Speaking of things called Poetry, a Chinese film also called Poetry won Best Picture at China's Wushan Goddess Art Film Festival in early April. It’s about poetry.

Life is not only making a living, but poetry too," Ning Jingwu, the director of Poetry, told the Global Times, pointing out that in today's over-scheduled life, people would rather watch short videos lacking any literary nutrition than slow down and read a poem in their spare time. 

Amanda Gorman’s poem, The Hill We Climb, made the news rounds recently for being banned in Florida schools—after one parent filed a complaint that it contained “hate messages”. Amanda Gorman, if you remember, was the poet for U.S. President Biden’s inauguration and Vogue’s first poet-by-trade as cover star. (Turns out, after all the press this whole incident has generated, Amanda Gorman’s book sales have now skyrocketed. And in response, a school district in Miami is even including lines from the poem in every graduation speech. So I guess the lesson is if you want your poetry to sell and spread, get it banned first.)

Did you watch the Succession finale? Apparently, the critically acclaimed TV show generated disproportionate media coverage for its popularity. Also, in a poetry Easter egg that some, including Vanity Fair writer Andrew Quintana, have discovered, all four season finale titles pull from a poem: Dream Song 29 by John Berryman from his 1964 Pulitzer-prize winning collection 77 Dream Songs. Here’s the poem if you want to read it in full.

A train crashed in India, and among the remnants from the tragic accident: handwritten love poems, pages and pages found and unclaimed.

Ada Limón’s poem bound for Jupiter’s moon Europa 8.1 billion miles away, as hinted to last month, has been revealed! Read the poem here and sign your name on a message that will fly on the Europa spacecraft departing fall 2024. Here’s an excerpt:

We, too, are made of wonders, of great and ordinary loves, of small invisible worlds, of a need to call out through the dark.

—From “In Praise of Mystery” by Ada Limón

Lana Del Rey just quit Instagram. But not without leaving trails of her creative process all over the internet. Earlier this year, she gave this Rolling Stone cover interview, which contains a multitude of references to poetry, both literally and metaphorically.

On poetry to process:

In a poem from her first collection, Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass, she describes desperately travelling to an AA meeting, knowing that she must leave her unpleasant relationship with a secretive man. She cries to the women and rehab teens while she tells her story. Del Rey ends ‘Thanks to the Locals’ with the lines: “I don’t have a pretty couplet to give resolution to this poem / nothing very eloquent to say / except that I was brave / and it would’ve been easier to stay”.

On the art of finding grandeur amidst the mundane:

Colloquial lyrics move as fast as a Beat writer’s poem: they seamlessly speak to a friend about culture, offer mundane updates on what’s going on in her daily life, present notes on dark relationships. But songs frequently, as Antonoff notes, come together with a “voice of God, some joy or hopefulness”.

On the life choices women face:

“It’s giving fig tree,” says Del Rey. “It’s giving Sylvia Plath, so many figs and if I don’t pick one first, they’ll all wither away and then there will be no figs to choose from.” 

On objects and poetry as portals:

We hunch over her iPhone to see a photo she took of a forgotten copy of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience that she discovered when going through her old belongings. Years ago, Del Rey wrote something on the sleeve. “What a beautiful concept: to have a bottom line of what you will not do. I myself would love to be with someone who doesn’t believe in pressure and someone who ignites passion not just safely, someone whose look reminds me of why I love living, a person whose naturalness reminds me of my own and that beauty is to be enjoyed.” 

On how we find ourselves through life and art:

So, when I ask why the overarching theme in her work is romantic love, the answer seems so obvious, as though we’re repeating ourselves. “Everybody finds themselves in a different way,” she replies. “Some people really find themselves through their work, some people find themselves through travelling. I think my basic mode is that I learn more about myself from being with people, and so when it comes to the romantic side of things, if you’re monogamous and it’s one person you’re with, you just put a lot of importance on that.” It’s different to her now, though, as part of this puzzling mood shift. Now in life and in writing she is orientated towards what’s happening day to day, “not being reactive to what appears to be the reality of the current circumstance and being as proactive as you can but letting everything go.” 

I never noticed how into poetry Rolling Stone was. But then again, I hadn’t noticed a lot of things until I started looking. Here’s hip hop artist Loyle Carter:

Thanks for reading!