[I should be writing something about politics today. It is long overdue. But, I am so distressed and depressed by the recent election results in Brazil and elsewhere that I feel compelled to remain silent on this subject. Besides, for a long while now, I have found it more rewarding to post poems that merely touch tangentially on politics and current affairs, rather than addressing such issues directly in some long-winded tub-thumping discourse that no-one will read. Writing loosely politically-themed poetry is a way I have found in recent years of reaching out somehow to others, embracing nuance, and evading bubbles and trolls.

Today, then, instead of writing about politics or publishing yet more poetry, I post a somewhat tongue-in-cheek piece entitled Advice to Young Poets.]

Advice to Young Poets

1. My main advice to young people thinking of writing poetry, is DON’T DO IT. Your creative talents will serve you better making movies or TV shows, taking up photography, working in the advertising industry, becoming a contemporary artist, doing stand-up comedy, wiggling your bum on YouTube, or selling your soul to the alt-right radio chat-show circuit.
2. If, for whatever perverse reason, you insist on persisting further in this unnatural artistic pursuit, please, please, please don’t write anything that could just as easily be conveyed in one of the above-mentioned genres. This does not of course mean that you should eschew any kind of subject matter that might be contained therein: cats, love, shitty relationships, flowers, death, politics etc. But always remember that poetry is about language the way painting is about paint, not the matter portrayed. The subject matter doesn’t matter that much. If you get really good at manipulating the phonemes on your oral canvas, this may shed some new light on the subject matter too. But don’t take that for granted either. Most probably it won’t.
3. Likewise, don’t write anything that would be better placed in a therapy session or a love letter. Do therapy or write a love letter instead. In fact, it is better to start out with a wholly impersonal style and put the personal stuff subtly in later, when you have more experience of life, a more distinct voice, and a more accomplished way with words. Haiku courses are good at training this.
4. Draw on past masters and mistresses but don’t just copy them. If you must emulate illustrious forebears, at least put a tweak in here or there to show that you have a healthy disrespect for your elders and betters and a voice of your own. Poetry is an exhausted art form. Almost everything has already been done.
5. Be ironic and playful. Experiment with styles and forms that mock previously accepted norms.
6. Think like a comedian. If your work doesn’t elicit a guffaw or at least a chuckle or a wry smile at least once in a while no-one will be that interested in it.
7. Break taboos. Like comic books, non-mainstream poetry is one of the few artistic genres that still permit a considerable degree of latitude so far as ‘political correctness’ is concerned. This is one of the main reasons why I have chosen in recent years to write poetry mainly about acts of violence, often in a jokey ambiguous fashion that would be totally unacceptable (and rightly so) in other more popular media. After all, the first recorded European poem—Homer’s Iliad—was about violence, wasn’t it? Another, perhaps more compelling reason, is that I live in a country that seems nowadays to be tottering troublingly between past and future dictatorial regimes and in a world teetering on the brink of ecological apocalypse.
8. Embrace nuance and ambiguity. Clarity of expression is NOT what poetry is about and ambivalence is a much needed virtue in these polarized times.
9. Don’t bother about publishing. Hone your own style and put it out only when you are satisfied with it, preferably for free, and only when you have fully digested the previous eight points. After all, remember: you are NEVER EVER going to make any money out of this. Poetry is a thing between you and the language given you by God. Think Emily Dickinson, not Kanye West or Taylor Swift.
10. Bear these rules in mind, but feel free to break them whenever it feels right to do so. This last rule applies not just to poets but to everyone everywhere in this world, whatever they do.