AT HOME ART DATE | read watch write
Poetry is a way of being alone without feeling alone. It allows you to experience another mind, I suppose. And it does that more fully than other art forms, I think. It doesn't simply describe an experience or a feeling, or a moment: it evokes it through, say, rhythm or tone or diction or metaphor. It creates a mood. A poem communicates before it is understood; it's not a fully paraphrasable form, which distinguishes it from other forms of writing. -- Nick Laird
Laird is a writer, novelist, poet, and film and literature teacher from Northern Ireland, as well as a humorist. For his fiction and poetry, he has won several prizes, including a Guggenheim, the Betty Trask Prize, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, a Somerset Maugham Award, the Rooney Prize, and the Ireland Chair of Poetry Prize. He lives in London and New York with his novelist wife, Zadie Smith, and their children.
This AT HOME ART DATE is a chance for you to find freedom within constraints.
(element one) READ a Nick Laird poem.
(element two) WATCH Nick Laird read his poems.
(element three) WRITE a poem
(element one) READ Nick Laird’s poem Go Giants here.
(element two) WATCH Nick Laird read his poems including Go Giants here.
(element three) WRITE a poem of short sentences each beginning with the same word.
How does it feel to have the constraint of starting with the same word? Is it freeing?
Finished? Congratulations. Well done, artist!
If you seek perfection, you will never reach completion.
Please send your poem to a friend or send it to me. I would love to see what you have created! Try always to share your art.
I hope you find Nick Laird + Your Poetry Word to be a compelling AT HOME ART DATE.
I curate provocative AT HOME ART DATES for you to enjoy solo or with others in your own home. Many of these art dates have online elements combined with supplemental reading, listening, and a variety of activities you can do at home to enhance how you express and experience art. Feel free to forward these art dates to others. Remember to check out the bonus material below.
These AT HOME ART DATES are free of charge. However, they do take time, energy, and a lifetime of artistic experience to put together. If you’d like to buy me a cup of tea as a bit of thanks, I’d appreciate your generosity. Buy Pattie a Cup of Tea.
Yours,
Pattie
Bonus Material: