Audre Lorde said it best: “Poetry is not a luxury.” It stands behind no closed door nor price tag but poetry does require the time and space for emergence. How does one make time and space for poetry to exist within their life?
The ‘again’ is silent because it is only poets who ponder this. It is only those who learned poetry manually—what a concept—who now wonder if all that time working in rhyme was worth it?
1) Use the energy of a sonnet when addressing your mother! Rhyme in front of all toddlers!
2) When you arrive at a new job, introduce yourself with a simile and a smile. Use metaphors to insult your enemies.
3) Use language with your life and do not compete with computers who will tame you or train upon you. Make your poetry even freer than it already is.
4) There are no price tags you must remove in order to address your lover. Be patient in your own mind. Impress your ancestors in prayer.
5) Be silent too—for once. Listen to poets whose words are also discounted and marked down. Open your ears and let life rhyme and connect before you.
6) If pages get too expensive and your phone dies before you can add poems to your notes, use ink to mark your skin. Cover your palms with words you will remember when it’s time to make sense of your existence again.
7) Let your essence be poetic, let your stride be poetic. Use grammar incorrectly and dare someone question it.
Look! It’s a poet in the wild, a brain twisting and turning, a tongue that creates without proper earning!
“She could’ve been a saleswoman if she only learned the language of economics.” But she chose poetics. She chose to spend time and space in literary choice, to live and wonder. “She’s a vagrant, a talker, a worder—”
It is speed the poet lacks. It is time over time, compounded by time that produces the fewest lines. ‘Ignorance is bliss’ are lines by the poet Thomas Gray on the circumstance of a man, fate unknown, destiny unclear. If only he knew how unknown and unclear it all would become. How worthwhile the time to decide,
“where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise.”
To afford poetry in 2025, tis folly to be wise where ignorance is bliss. What is coming is coming and we have words as weapons. Lets enjoy each carving, each chance to say what is within us to say.
Charge admission to your poetics, charge respect for your rhymes. The sale of your name is the price. Your life is the time.
Katrina Sarah Miller is an interdisciplinary artist from the Palm Beaches. She has exhibited photography, performance, and illustration works locally in South Florida, nationally and internationally in galleries and as a public artist. She was a Say Word LA Poetry Slam champion, LA Youth Poetry Ambassador, and has performed poetry nationally.