the art of daily poems
Sun, 14 Sep 2025
| last modified Mon, 27 Oct 2025
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It all started around three years ago - rather, two years, nine months and a bit - with an innocent challenge from a Christian mentor of mine. A wonderfully creative and spontaneous mentor.
“I challenge you to write a poem every day”
No elaboration. No end date. To be fair, the end date was unspoken: a kind of ‘do this as long as its beneficial’. But for me, this was a wonderful opportunity for a lifelong endeavour. At least I hope it will be.
I’ve always had a creative itch, whether in music, sketching or the wild west of my imagined world. But this was the real deal: disciplined, relentless, meditative.
Without too much thought I said “yeah” and got right to it. I like to think of this decision more as distributed across the first few poems - in other words: I fell in love. In love with words, in love with giving form to the contours of my mind, in love with the richness of our condition. And I fell in love more as I wrote and got deeper into the streak.
I fancied myself as somewhat good, but as with all artists I’m plagued by a level of dissatisfaction with my work especially as it fades further from the present. Regardless, for the discipline and positive comments I’ve received I’ll keep on sharing and honing my craft. Stay posted for when I implement a poem database on this site. Link will be here.
Anyway, how do I keep it going?! I think its the culmination of multiple factors:
- I play by friendly rules
- I harness the power of boredom
- My whole life is fuel
First up, friendly rules. To put it simply: I’m quite leniant with myself. If I miss a day, I can write a poem the next day. If I go to bed super late then a poem at 1:30 is still game. The key though is the principle of substitution: a poem is still written for everyday - that’s non-negotiable. It’s just that I care more about the poem being written than playing by the rules which facilitate them. This makes me much more resilient to mistakes as I never fall flat, only roll.
Secondly, the power of boredom. I’ve developed an interesting habit of stubbornly waiting for something to write about in my poems. Sometimes, I open my writing app and I’m off. Sometimes, it takes a few minutes. Sometimes, I sit for a hour. Similarly to playing by friendly rules though, there’s an underlying defiance and unreasonableness: “sure have it your way, but there will be a poem for today”.
Finally, life is fuel. I’m a firm believer that every life is fascinating. Sometimes we become blinded to that fact, but even the most mundane things like the reflections in a glass of water have such depths. I’m also blessed to have quite an exciting life, but I’ve dipped into the ponds of the mundane many atime. I often write my poems in the evening and use them as an excuse to reflect on the day, to pick out a scene, or even just launch off of memories into some imaginative escapade.
I believe that there is an aspect of transcendence to all creative pursuits. There is a kind or fragility and weakness in the waiting for inspiration and it often comes unannounced and unplanned. I’m struggling to find the words so I’ll leave you with this: All that is good comes from God. Let all the rest be my imperfections.
last 5 blogs
- poeming is here (1 Nov)
- open spaces (25 Oct)
- reading more (16 Oct)
- when things go dark (7 Oct)
- blogging is here (30 Sep)