Committing to Poetry: Why I Read a Poem Every Day
A couple of years ago, I committed to reading at least one poem every single day. In my life, this practice began with the poet Safia Elhillo. Back in 2016, she often posted photos of handwritten quotes in her stories on Instagram.
Screenshot of Safia Elhillo’s Instagram Story featuring handwritten quotes, taken by the author in 2016
Screenshot of Safia Elhillo’s Instagram Story featuring handwritten quotes, taken by the author in 2016
Screenshot of Safia Elhillo’s Instagram Story featuring handwritten quotes, taken by the author in 2016
These photos seemed to be glimpses of a journal that she was keeping, and because of the frequency of her posts, I inferred that she was sharing a daily practice of writing down her favorite parts of what she was reading every day. As a lover of journals and ritual, I became enamored with this idea and put it in my back pocket with my own little spin.
Why Poems? Why Every Day?
While some of Safia Elhillo’s posts were in prose, I decided to limit this practice to poetry because it felt more sustainable to me. My days were once filled with students, lesson-planning, and grading, and now they are filled with many, simultaneous needs while mothering a toddler and a baby. I am still working toward having a consistent writing practice as I struggle to meet my basic needs as a full-time stay-at-home parent.
✨ To me, sticking with poems is more flexible for these reasons:
I can easily find (or even stumble upon) a poem: in a book, on social media, in an email, through a quick search for a literary magazine, websites like poets.org, or podcasts like The Slowdown.
I can read a whole poem and feel a sense of completion—no need to return to the same text or pick up where I left off.
I can read through one book of poetry slowly over the course of a month or two.
I could still show up for my love of poetry in less than 10 minutes every day.
For more than a decade of my life, I felt so much pressure to be an excellent student and an excellent employee with excellent credit that I did not let poetry take center-stage the way that I truly wanted. Starting this practice was a declaration to myself:
“Poetry needs to be a part of my life, and I am willing to commit to poetry one way or another.”
I am moved to reflect on this now as I begin to establish a weekly writing schedule and make my own path toward completing the second half of my first chapbook. I am moving from reading a poem every day for years toward writing every day and living my dream.
✨ Here are some examples of lines I love:
“Open a poem, / the news overspills.”
“A country doesn’t begin or end on accident.”
“I hardly know / My life. / Fruit falls / When it is ripe.”
Where do I write these down? I prefer a small and simple weekly dated planner that already has a dedicated space for each day of the year. However, to begin, I suggest setting up one of those unfinished journals you (and I!) have lying around. Take two pages and write the dates for the upcoming week with a few lines in-between, or take a few more pages and set yourself up for the month. Start the practice and get a feel for it. That will help you decide if you really want to keep going and which format would best fit your approach to the practice.
Sometimes I do miss a couple of days or a couple of weeks. When I look back at the blank days or weeks in my little poem-a-day planner, I don’t sulk at the empty spaces. Instead, I see every instance that I returned to a practice that has become so important to me. When I can articulate exactly why I missed a few days, I write it down in the blank space as a way of documenting my journey and my humanity.
Looping in Craft
I believe something happens intuitively when we make reading poems a consistent practice. By keeping track of the parts of poems I like most (and the poems I like most as a whole), I am accumulating evidence and examples of what I like.
I believe this forms a more personal and lasting foundation in my approach to studying craft because I can look back at all of the lines I have written down and use them to identify and then articulate a pattern. It makes craft less about what I feel I am “supposed to” know and more about understanding and naming my instincts as a poet. That way of thinking about and reflecting on poems helps me build my poetic sensibilities as a reader and writer of poetry.
For example, I have found that many of the lines I have loved most are related to the use of enjambment. I take it further and ask myself, Why? I think it is related to the unexpected turn that a phrase, sentence, or stanza takes with one brilliantly placed enjambment. Now, one of the first things I look for while revising is opportunities for more impactful enjambments.
There are also more concrete ways to loop in a study of craft. For example, you can use The Poetry Lab’s series on Craft Terms to find your daily poem, since most of these short articles feature an example from a poem.
I also recommend reading the anthology Poetry Unbound, which includes a short essay by Pádraig Ó Tuama after each poem. While reading each poem and essay, make your own big list of “craft terms” that includes any language that might help you describe how a poem is working. When you finish the anthology, you can challenge yourself to write one craft-related observation in addition to your favorite lines for each day’s poem. Hopefully, the list you already made can support you in this challenge and beyond.
For example, while reading poems in Pilgrim Bell by Kaveh Akbar, I made a note related to punctuation, specifically the use of periods beyond the end of a sentence or complete thought. Now, when I want to expand my use of punctuation, I have at least one place I can turn to for inspiration.
More Tips for Expanding this Practice
🔸Literary Magazine and Journals
If you are a poet actively submitting to literary magazines and journals, include them in your daily search for a poem. You can begin with the ones that have already published your favorite poets, and you will surely discover more organically along the way.
I think this is important because it gives you a sense for a literary magazine’s particular taste, and it always feels better to submit to a magazine as someone who is actually familiar with their work.
As someone who is actively submitting poems for publication, this has become a very intentional—and almost energetic—part of this practice for me because I ask myself this: Why would I expect a reader or editor to appreciate my work if I have not taken the time and care to appreciate theirs?
🔸 Generating Poems
When I look back at all of the lines I have written down over the course of a couple of months, I can always find a repeating theme. Over the past few months, I have noticed that some of the lines I have written down are contemplating death. That marks something that is on my mind: death.
I plan to bring all the poems in my tracker that evoke death together as a way of creating a mini-workshop for myself. I will study them together, take note of what connects them, and search for questions that make me curious. These observations will serve as prompts for a freewrite, which is key in my writing practice. Then, I try to find the poem in the freewrite, and go from there.
🔸 Make a list
of all of the poems you love most so that you can return to them.
My daily dose of poetry is an expression of my commitment to poetry; it helps me keep perspective on what matters and feel more connected on a spiritual level. It keeps me in the habit of seeing into my own life with wonder, which helps me find the poem in a stained shirt, a chewed-up book, and my toddler’s reaction to the rain. It makes everything I love about poetry much more a part of me and how I choose to live.
I hope it does the same for you.
This article was published on June 13, 2024. Written by:
