In April last year I attended the Purplebeach event in London. Purplebeach is a congregation of business leaders, thinkers and conversation partners who experiences that transform thinking, shift paradigms and ultimately lead to new ways of doing business and achieving results. One of the exercises for attendees was to submit a set of favourite lines from a song or poem, which would then be amalgamated into a grand poem read by Pele Cox.
Tutored by Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, Pele Cox has since been the Poet in Residence at Tate modern and Poet in Residence at the Royal Academy of Arts.
Day 1, the poem was read out including the lines I had sent across – from a song by Indus Creed called 'Sleep':
The moment of truth has arrived
When you come to terms with your lies
The neon dreams have died away
and all that’s left are shades of grey
I had always dabbled in poetry, most notably as a school kid (writing, of course, kiddish poems) and then as a teenager (writing ‘she loved me, she left me’ themed poems) and then as a working man, scribbling frustrated lines on the last page of my notebook.
So at one session in Purplebeach I happened to be sitting next to Pele. I showed her what I had written and don’t know what she saw but after that we had a conversation and she agreed to take me on as a student.
Over the past one year I have been learning poetry. As an eager first-time learner, all I wanted to do was start writing great poetry fast, like the masters. But then I learnt, or rather what Pele focused with me first, was discovering my voice and style. I did that by reading many different kinds of poets from classics to the modern, writing many many poems in differently styles, editing like crazy in our sessions…It was hard work . And know what – that’s not what I thought it would be like – I thought I will learn some principles and then will come eureka moments, I will get enlightened, suddenly something will switch on inside me and I will start writing great poetry. Nope – nothing of all that – poetry requires hard work, discipline, dedication and focus.
I am still taking baby steps but learning to write good poetry has been one of the most enriching things I have done in life. After dabbling with many art forms, only to give up saying “nah – this is not for me”, I get that true mastery requires going deep, giving it attention and focus.
I encourage you to pick up an art form and go deep, and not give up on it prematurely – it will change the way you look at the world.
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