Happy World Poetry Day readers!
Today is a celebration of prose - whether its introspective explorations of the soul or romantic retellings of nature’s beauty - and to mark the occasion, we have asked some of our in-house poets to share their experiences of reading poetry and how it has changed their life for the better.
Here are their replies…
Maria Souza, author of Wild Daughters
Poetry holds a special kind of medicine and magic. It invites us to think deeply about the world, offering words in the form of images that unlock our potential and emotions.
For me, the poetry of Mary Oliver is life-defining. The famous line, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”, is one I carry with me every day. It helps shape my choices and the life I am building.
Her poem Wild Geese also strikes my heart, here is a passage from it:
“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.”
To read poetry is a gift we give ourselves. Through it, the world becomes more alive and more meaningful. We feel less alone. Poetry has changed my life and I wish it changes yours too.
Gabriel Pare, author of Poetry of Your Dreams
Reading poetry will help people understand complex emotions.
Reading poetry can give a person an inside look at what that person's story is, and all of their deep personal emotions.
Reading someone's poetry doesn't just make something relatable.
Reading poetry can alter the course of someone's emotional state - it can turn someone's bad day into a day filled with joy, and perspective.
Reading poetry can save someone from feeling uncertain about something.
Reading poetry can make someone's day go from really bad to inspiring, because of the tone of the poetry.
Syamal Roy, author of Hundred Golden Leaves – Collection of Poems
I did spend a considerable period of my life in New England during my post-doctoral studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before returning to my home city, Calcutta, India in 1989 to start my own laboratory at the Indian Institute of Chemical Biology. As a New Englander, I am very much fond of the works of Robert Frost and how beautifully he crafted landscape of New England.
I love his poem The Road Not Taken, the last three lines in particular:
“Two roads diverted in a wood, and I-
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the differences.”
The reason I loved these lines are because they are very relevant to the life of a scientist - I do research on infectious diseases. It is very important for a scientist for meaningful contribution in science to find a right problem and less information is available in that particular field. I consider that this is a very important message to all scientists involved in scientific research.
Lutfiya Dadabhay, author of The Coconut Leaf’s Song
Poetry is the mirror I hold up to the world when I need to see it differently.
There is something about poetry—its rhythm, its quiet weight—that changes the way we experience emotion. A single line can make grief feel lighter, love feel louder, and loneliness feel shared. Poetry doesn’t just describe life; it translates it. It turns the things we struggle to say into something that understands us back.
Reading poetry has changed my life because it has given words to what I once thought was unspeakable. And in that, I’ve found a kind of magic—one that lingers long after the poem ends.
Shannon Ryan, author of Elephant
I greatly admire Rupi Kaur and her poetry, my favourite of her collections being, The Sun and Her Flowers. Her imagery paints the experiences, emotions and realities of being a woman in so many colours that deeply resonates with me. The poems feel flowing like thoughts, it gives the words more space, freedom for self-reflection. This organic way of writing free from constraints of keeping to a particular structure inspires me in my own poetry.
Alongside Milk and Honey, Kaur’s debut poetry collection were the first poems I ever read that flowed so gently but hit me like gunpowder. Reading Kaur's words have certainly changed my life for the better. Her poems are a true gift to be cherished and the palette of my writing braver and brighter for it.
Isabella Hades, author of Stages of Grief (Brought on by a Narcissist)
I joined a writer’s group in my area a while ago to find some community within my creativity - this group was filled with people who had self-published their books, were looking to publish, or had not published a single thing and had no desire to.
It was also filled with people who had lived and led different lives than me. The object of this group was simply to talk and read to each other our works. On the first night I joined for a reading, I heard several wonderful excerpts from work-in-progress novels and some creepy short stories- as well as beautiful poetry. There was one older man who begun reading near the end of the two hours we had; I cannot remember a single line he had read - I could not recite it to you even if I tried to - but I do remember how the piece made me feel.
It was astounding, something I don’t think I could ever come close to writing, and it made me feel entirely bare as a human being as if my soul had been laid down in a misty forest and read by a creature greater than me. I think about that poem continuously, I doubt I’ll ever hear it again or find the courage to ask for a physical copy of it to keep. But his reading reminded me why poetry is important; it is because it is the sincerest of the arts.
It is honest in its existence and cannot be synthetic even if it tried. It reminds us of our humanity, and our existence and nudges us closer to each other: I distinctly remember the first time I read an Emily Dickinson poem, it made me feel less alone - I read her words and thought they were my thoughts left out on a table.
I think there is a lack of honesty with oneself in an always moving, fast paced world such as the one we live in today- poetry forces us to slow down, and to remember our own existence as human beings. reading it will remind you there is more than the things that force you into anxiety, and reminds you that you are not alone in your existence as a human being on earth-and when you become more honest with your own existence, it allows you to live life to its full capacity
John Carter, author of Kip’s Dream
Poetry could be said to have an inexhaustible range of descriptive possibilities. A poem stands much as a piece of music – it may be matrixed in the mind as a cohesive entity. We are able to carry it with us as we would a remembered melody.
Once learnt, it may be thought or recited in full, or partly recalled at will, or re-read from a favourite book. A poem is able to give permanence to a salient moment or a shared experience.
Mahuroos Shafeeq, author of Veil of Sorrows
Poetry found me in my loneliest moments, offering peace when silence felt unbearable. Words became my refuge. Poetry allows our voice to be heard amongst millions of others, crafting verses that echo my deepest feelings, that has allowed me to feel connected.
The most curing part of being a poet is the wellness of mental health. Deep down, we are all writers. Each of us carries a multitude of stories within, making us the true poetry of existence. Writing, reading and listening go hand in hand; It is a way of healing. With the three elements, it can be transformative: pain to beauty. It can remind us of our shared unity in humanity giving voice to advocacy and injustice. Emotions that we struggle to voice. Poetry is a source of inspiration, comfort and understanding - well that is how I have known it to be.
Robert Anderson Serio, author of Promise of Spring
I don’t think I ever really started out writing poetry thinking on how it could change my life for the better. It was simply something that came innate within this creative part of myself that was always there. It took me a very long time to realize how reading it, as opposed to simply writing it, could change my life for the better.
Sure, writing it presented myself with a sort of soulful communion with myself, some artistic fulfillment I seemed to have failed to find in other mediums. As egotistical as it may seem, I enjoyed writing and forgetting. When I first started writing poetry, I found two quotes that stuck with me, both of the same vein — “first thought, best thought.” I boyishly ascribed myself to that notion for a very long time. Assuming that when the lines, the stanzas, and the words that serenaded themselves into sentences were done, so was the poem. No going back, and changing what is already perfection of expression, right? Well, half right. You’d have to ask another, maybe walk the streets of some metropolitan city, a la family feud and get a bunch of separate reactions to some first thought draft, and the one you changed it into, and ask. But at the end of the day, and the beginning of the night, and relinquishing both to the dawn, would it even matter?
But back on tangent, why will reading poetry change your life for the better, as is the purpose of this blog post. I don’t really know. It’s the most subjective form of writing I can think of that exists in this world of ours. There’s a poem I truly love, and so did a friend of mine once. By William Carlos Williams, that is short and sweet, and soulful in some moment-in-time sort of way, entitled “The Red Wheelbarrow” —
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
Now, obviously that is simplistic, but what is the image that it conjures? What is so beautiful about its simplicity? It’s about that moment in time? You may go back to it and feel something different each time, or perhaps the same notion is felt each time and it’s a comfort bit of writing. Now, let’s compare that, to let’s say, Leaves of Grass, but let’s not because comparing poetry, is like comparing someone’s smile, or frown, or laugh, or any emotional undercurrent, and overcurrent of their being, there’s no need to. It’s all simply expression.
There’s an emotional honesty that comes with the territory of engaging in poetry. There doesn’t have to be, but it seems that it’ll find it’s way in there anyway. For myself, it’s always an expression of one’s self, no matter how small, and even when it appears as such, it’ll inevitably be re-read as this larger essence arising from that authorial being. There’s an entire mountain range of expression to be uncovered in the summits of poetic understanding. But at the heart of it, and to end on this note, it all ranges from finding truth. For myself, that word, “truth,” seems to be appearing in the headlights of my soul whenever I contemplate the nature of this beautiful art form, whether it be in writing my own, re-reading what I’ve written, or delving into the emotional depths of other’s wonderful work.
So to conclude, why will reading poetry change your life for the better? I would say that it may help in finding truth…
Fareeda Steele, author of Love Rhapsodies
Poems and lyrics are influencers of the past and present just like social media influencers share a short verse in song or rap.
Poetry changed the lives of my readers, as they came to understand and feel it lightens the mental load, fills your spirits with romance of self and the beauty of nature.
My reader can open their own gift box of word art and scatter their thoughts on paper, share words of empathy and encouragement or describe their feelings more vividly. When a gift of art is shared this celebration and artistic energy radiates like Apollo’s rays lighting the morn, lifting and waking us from our literary slumber.
My influences are William Wordsworth, John Keats, Thich Nhat Hanh, Rumi and Li Bai. These poets evoked feelings and shared experiences, they connected humanity and their readers in a focused meditative trans, pulling them away from daily pressures of life. Word art evokes joy in reading and sharing, my intentions are to offer them humbly to inspire my readers to open their gift box, write and share just like my influencers have.
Thank you to everyone involved in this special feature and we hope you all have a good World Poetry Day!
