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I hope everyone grows tired of being cruel to each other soon

hope girls grow up knowing that there are infinite ways of being a woman. hope girls grow up loving themselves for who they are.

“Don’t be afraid to suffer—take your heaviness / and give it back to the earth’s own weight; / the mountains are heavy, the oceans are heavy.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke, from The Poetry of Rilke; “Sonnets to Orpheus”

“Growing Around Grief”

Lois Tonkin, 1996

authenticity is so magnetic.

i hope that people who leave rants in their tags, people who leave descriptions for their playlists, people who have funny titles for their essays, people who read aloud to themselves, people who giggle at their own jokes, and people who smile when they make eye contact with strangers are all having excellent days

mental illness hasn’t been destigmatised but commercialised

Write everyday. It’s easier than it sounds. Make time everyday to write something. Even if it’s one line scribbled into a napkin on the subway or the bus, or a whole precious early hour in the morning. This practice lets the mind know that everyday we must be observant, that we are paying attention, always.

Learn poems you love. Read whatever poems you can get your hands on. Not just the classics, but those poets who are writing today. Pick up journals, magazines, and anthologies; search for the poems that break you open. Read those poems over and over again until you have them memorized in your mouth. Don’t worry about mimicking them, just accept them as your teachers and hold them close. Become an expert on the poems you adore.

Cultivate silence. Silence is essential in order to hear your own voice. Especially nowadays when we often have the television on, the radio on, or music playing all day long, it is essential to find some silence to listen to your own voice. Your own voice is the only thing your poetry needs.

Embrace revision. Revision might be the hardest thing that writers have to do, aside from battling our own internal demons, because it means admitting that we are wrong. Sometimes we are so wrong that we need to start all over again, and it’s embarrassing. Sometimes we only need to change a comma, but listen, every poem needs revision and every poet needs to learn humility.

Practice gratitude. Cherish those friends and colleagues who care enough to read and comment on your work. If you truly pursue writing, you will come to realize how enormously important these people are to your writing life and therefore to your making of a “real” life. Make sure you read their work with the same care and closeness they offer you. And buy them coffee and cakes when they return a manuscript with pencil marks on every page. It is a true act of kindness that should be greeted with great gratitude. And be thankful that you want to write at all, what a powerful art to devote a life to, how lucky we are to love such a wild untamable thing.

— Ada Limón, “Mystery & Birds: 5 Ways to Practice Poetry”

‘we all bloom in our own way, at different times’