#2. Journal keeping, Bad Coffee: September Edition
The Poetry Edition
Hello!
Welcome to the second edition and thank you all for subscribing!
I am pleasantly surprised by the overwhelming response the first edition received and I hope the subsequent editions do not disappoint.
In the previous edition, I shared some hiccups I faced while creating for Instagram and how it has changed my relationship with the platform.
Social media made reaching an audience easy - it democratized publishing. Writing compelling content about abstract concepts such as feelings and emotions had found a wider audience: everyone wanted to read heart-warming stories, stories of personal conflicts and struggles. Being called a writer was ( I guess still is) cool. This popularity helped me rebuild my relationship with writing. I began keeping a journal: most often to document moments that I was likely to forget, often obscure things and feelings that most would deem unimportant. Sometimes I shared it on the ‘Gram, sometimes I did not. Safe to say, I was writing more than I used to.
Moving to America added a layer of complexity to my emotions - I could not go back to being the girl who took things for granted anymore. Writing poetry helped me channelize these feelings: it allowed me space to be self-indulgent without revealing too much about my reality.
It was a facade I was willing to keep.
Reading Corner
This month I am reading Vikram Seth’s poetry book called All you who Sleep Tonight, which I had found conveniently available at a Thrift Store.
The book in itself is teeny-tiny, an oddball of 60 pages strung together, with dedicated sections for quatrains, about romantic rendezvous, and poems written from a different person’s perspective. The poems are easy to read, and if you are used to heavy-worded poetry, you will most likely be disappointed. Read it for the rhyming scheme, and how with simple words, profound feelings are conveyed.
Some of my favorite verses are
Sit, drink your coffee; your work can wait awhile.
You’re twenty-six, and still have some of life ahead.
No need for wit; just talk vacuities, and I’ll
Reciprocate in kind, or laugh at you instead.
-Sit
All you who sleep tonight
Far from the ones you love,
No hand to left or right
And emptiness above-
-All You Who Sleep Tonight
Have a book recommendation? Write to me!
Writing Corner
I have been out of ideas for poems this season and recently learnt to be okay with this feeling and let the poem come to me when its ready.
How to Bake a Poem
Before you let it out
To the world to consume,
Make sure you have
baked it enough.
Did you assemble the
words with careful
precision ?
Chosen wisely, are they ?
Did you let the words
sit with you ?
Play with it a little.
Knead it with your hands,
add a pinch of lemon
zest if you please,
Let it rest.
Have the words found a
rhythm yet?
Place it in your favorite
mold,
watch it raise.
Your poem is now
ready to be served.
Learning Corner
Some interesting things I came across on the internet :
Lounge Corner
In the spirit of the release of the latest season of Money Heist!
See you in the next edition!
Pratiksha