"Not into poetry"? Start here.
Welcome to Poetry Camp
Oh, hello there. If you are here, I suspect you have a curious streak, an inkling for adventure, a hankering for wonder.
And I have just the adventure for you: Poetry.
But first, let’s start with this: You don’t have to be into poetry to get into it. And you don’t have to get it to enjoy it.
Why poetry?
Poetry is joyful, fun, playful, moving, expansive, horrifying, unsettling, wonderful, magical, stirring, mundane, and miraculous, all the ingredients we need to feel alive.
It’s romance not limited to love, texture not limited to touch, alive-ness not limited to passion.
Well, it can be.
These are just possibilities offered by poetry, a pursuit, practice, and pastime not all that different from painting and cleaning.
And just look what they did: turned the mundane and overwhelming into joy, sparking tiny revolutions so that more of us could really see the world and be in it. (Bonus points for poetry: it’s not as messy as most other leisurely activities.)
But possibilities are just paths, and when they aren’t taken, well, they aren’t taken. They become the roads less travelled, hidden from plain sight and overrun by shadows of doubt, criticism, by everything they made you memorize in school and that guy Julio on Friends turning women into empty vases.
A poem is an adventure.
Words are proxies to worlds, moods, senses, memories, and futures.
Poetry is for movers and shakers, moment-makers and world-builders, from politicians to musicians, living beyond books and school curriculums in your favorite song lyrics and on podiums and in billboards and even in outer space.
Beyonce and Taylor and Rihanna have all snuck poems into bestselling albums, between glitz and bops.
Before Barack was Mr. President, he was a young poet.
But poetry certainly isn’t just for the iconic among us.
Such force in so few words? Poetry is the shortcut to all the possibilities offered by reading, right under our noses.
And like that character in the movie who you least suspect is the lover or killer, it’s been here the entire time, surviving the rise and fall of empires, inventions, and literary forms.
Poetry is anything you want it to be. It’s (fill in the blank), choose your own adventure.
And when you let yourself be shaken and stirred, when you get that lightbulb moment—or that electric shock—they become seeds that lead you to new and old places, feelings you’ve forgotten and colours you can’t name they’re so far over the rainbow.
All that with just a few words on a page.
All that is for you, too.
Do I have your attention?
Welcome to Poetry Camp, a 5-day series for anyone brand new to poetry— who doesn’t get it, doesn’t read it, has some ideas about it.
And yet, who somehow has found themselves here, ready to perhaps change their mind, ready to have a new world blow wide open.
(Vio)let’s go.
Announcing: Poetry Camp
What: Poetry Camp* No Really, What: A 5 day introduction to the textured, colourful, and expansive world of contemporary poetry, made for beginners and the poetry-curious. We will get to know poetry, how it can be a powerful tool, and read a diverse cross-section of poems! It doesn’t matter if the last…
Day 1: Initiation
Let me tell you why you are here. You have come because you know something. What you know you can't explain but you feel it. You've felt it your whole life, felt that something is wrong with the world. You don't know what, but it's there like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad…
Day 2: Immersion
You’re officially in the rabbithole, but you may still be unsure, tentative, concerned. Do you feel your grip on reality loosening? Are you sure it’s not tightening, getting clearer? Welcome to Day 2 of Poetry Camp. (Missed Day 1? Here you go.) You’ve been initiated into the vast and expansive world of poetry.…
Day 3: Spectrum
Rules, schmules. I used to be an extremely good rule-follower. Then I dyed my hair peach, quit my job, went a bit rogue. It’s not that I don’t believe in them. It’s just that most rules, aren’t in fact, real rules. Welcome to Day 3 of Poetry Camp. If you need to catch up:
Day 4: Friction
It’s day 4 of Poetry Camp and the first day of camp feeling is fading. You look around, you feel changed, but is the idea of poetry, its power to change, really sinking in? It could take time. Maybe you miss home, the comfortable place where rules were rules and when you learned something, y…
Day 5: Expansion
It’s Day 5 of Poetry Camp and it’s time to say goodbye. You made it all the way to camp send-off. Have you been enjoying your trip? Missed a day? Let’s rewind. Is poetry what you expected it to be? Do you feel any different? Has the world around you shifted?