3 Easy and Endlessly Rewarding Ways to Make Poetry Part of Your Every Day
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At some point in our lives, most of us seem to have decided that poetry is too precious for us. That it requires sitting quietly, alone in a silent room, to really appreciate or understand. That if we didn't get a PhD in literature, poems don't have a place in our lives. But poetry shouldn't be extraordinary. It should be ordinary. I don't mean that poems themselves should be basic or boring; I mean that poetry can and should play a role in our boring, daily, typical, and often totally mundane lives.
This year, I decided I wanted to find a way to read poems every single day, and I did. What I didn't do is start waking up before dawn each day to read Emily Dickinson's collected works for an hour. I knew I'd never follow through on something like that. Instead, I just found sneaky ways to make poetry part of my existing routines: scrolling on social media, listening to podcasts on my commute, and checking my email.
At the risk of sounding dramatic, this daily poetry habit has made my life better, deeper, and more rewarding. And I think it has the potential to do that for other people — whether or not they consider themselves a reader with a capital R. Ahead are the podcast, Instagram account, and newsletter I suggest seeking out if you want to make poetry a habit.
Follow @poetryisnotaluxury on Instagram
The Instagram account @poetryisnotaluxury, which is run by an LA-based poetry-lover, is both well-curated and prolific. While the person who started the account prefers to stay anonymous, they tell me they started the page in 2016 "as a place to stow the poetry I read, a mobile resource."
The account's name, of course, comes from poet Audre Lorde's famous quote: "Poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence." Fueled by that belief, the page surfaces a wealth of poems every single day — sometimes as many as five or six. I especially love following because of that fact, and because of its emphasis on modern poets like Eileen Myles, Saeed Jones, Kim Addonizio, and Lorde herself.
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Subscribe to The Slowdown Podcast
Former US poet laureate Tracy K. Smith hosts this remarkable daily podcast, which always offers me a much-needed moment of reflection — especially considering I usually listen to it while lodged between cars in LA traffic.
Every brief, five-minute episode of The Slowdown features a reflection or anecdote from Smith (or one of the capable poets who sometimes fill in for her) and the reading of a single poem.
Don't let the short runtime of these episodes fool you; every installment reaches deep into your heart and mind to jolt you, just a little bit, out of your daily routine.
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Sign Up For the Pome Newsletter
Matthew Ogle started Pome, his daily TinyLetter, in 2014. What began as a bit of an experiment has turned into a small literary institution. Six years later, Ogle has sent out three-and-a-half years' worth of daily poems and reaches several thousand subscribers, all of who wake each morning to find a hand-selected poem in their inbox.
I love the unlikely moment each morning when I stumble across Pome in my Gmail. Up against online shopping alerts, meeting requests, and the other ephemera that makes up adult life, it promises me a moment of reprieve and possibility.
I always allow myself the short minute or two it takes to open the note, read the poem, and sit with it for a second. It's made my mornings feel infinitely less hectic — and infinitely more meaningful.