When Everything Sucks, Make Art

That's how we find our way through

Jan 20, 2024

I follow an Instagram account called Poetry is not a luxury.

The name is taken from this Audre Lorde quote: “Poetry is not a luxury, it is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.”

Every day, the account posts a poem or an excerpt from a poem. Sometimes the poet is famous and beloved, like Mary Oliver. Sometimes the poet is unknown and unheralded. Sometimes the poem is large and loud, sometimes small and quiet.

The point is not the poet or the sentiment of the poem on any particular day. The point is the necessity of it, the understanding that poetry is not limited to special occasions or jazz-infused café readings. Poetry is a fundamental essential for everyone, everywhere, every day.

I’ve been thinking about this concept quite a lot lately, in the clamor and calamity of the world around us. As bombs fall and children starve and factions form and politicians lie and life just goes on and on and on, I’ve been thinking about the life-giving, life-saving need not just for poetry but for art of all kinds.

Art gives us the means to tell a story. And within that story exists the power to change the world. Because stories can crawl inside your heart and crack open your mind like nothing else.

“When you realize that you fail to feel the way others do, try to read some poetry.
Poetry may, and it now should, help you regain some humanity that was taken from you.” Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha

Art alone cannot call back a missile or heal a bleeding planet, but it can make people pause and hear and see. It can draw back a curtain and reveal something, make a person feel something, that they never would have dreamt possible.

There is an often-lauded book by a Marxist writer named Ernst Fischer called The Necessity of Art. It was published in 1959, but is still in print today and in fact was re-issued in 2010 by Verso Books. The most-quoted line of Fischer’s work reads:
“Art is necessary in order that man should be able to recognize and change the world. But art is also necessary by virtue of the magic inherent in it.”

Ask any artist and they’ll tell you of the compulsion, the incessant itch. If you’re an artist, you need to create. You can’t help it. If you’re not making, you’re slowly dying.

I started writing when I was very young. I wrote letters to an imaginary friend. I wrote plays for my sister and I to act out. I wrote long, meandering stories in a Mead spiral-bound notebook with puppies on the cover.

I didn’t know why I was writing. Nobody told me I should. It just happened. It was an extension of myself. I was, therefore I wrote.

I have seen the same thing happen with my own daughter. From her earliest years, she was making up stories. She was drawing pictures that told her stories, she was singing story songs that she made up. Even before she could write, she was dictating stories to Marido and I and asking us to write them down. There’s a box in her bedroom that contains an entire book series she created and illustrated, more than a dozen 5x7 staple-edged books about the adventures of an intrepid dog named Blossom.

Now 13 years old, Filha is still a whirl of creation. She is always drawing, writing, animating. For Christmas presents for her cousins and grandparents she selected a bunch of small white stones from our yard and painted them to look like beetles.

No one tells her she should make things. She just can’t help herself.

I often think that the act of making art keeps me sane. Whether or not another soul ever sees the words I write, the need to put them on a page somewhere is inexorable. And in finding the words and assembling them into sentences, I find myself. I sort out my jumbled thoughts, pull them apart and lay them out in lines so I can make sense of them.

That alone is magic.

Sometimes we use our art as a megaphone to shout down the world, but sometimes we create for ourselves alone. We do it for the need of it, but also for the joy.

A few months ago I made a promise to myself that I’d put my writing out into the world in a more intentional way. Yes, creation for creation’s sake is important. But I’ve been creating for years and years. I have so many stories to tell, and I am more than ready to find more ears to hear.

Expanding my reach to a wider audience means I need to submit things for publication, find my way into literary circles, and toot my own horn a bit.

So that’s what I’ve been doing. In November, I read some of my work at a poetry reading in Lisbon. In December I read again, this time in Setúbal. (That reading started at 9:30pm which is nearly my bedtime so you know my attendance means I’m truly committed to this cause!)

Every other Thursday, I meet with my online writing group to workshop my book in progress (and theirs). This week I set a goal of writing 1,000 words a day at least three days a week. I also decided that on the 15th of every month, I’d submit at least one piece—poem or essay—for publication.

Last year I submitted 13 pieces to different contests, journals, magazines, and anthologies. Ten of them were rejected, but three were accepted (that’s actually a pretty good ratio!) One of those pieces was a poem called “Worthy,” and it was just published this week by an online literary magazine called SWWIM. You can read it here.

Yesterday my friend Marwan, a graphic designer, asked if he could illustrate “Worthy.” And on a video chat last Tuesday with my friend Kelly (who also happens to be a graphic designer), we made plans to collaborate on a new poetry/photography project.

Collaboration is always a fun way to create. Last fall, my friends Lisa (who writes plays) and Anna (who makes music) decided to start creating short films together, and asked me to take a role in their first film. My acting skills are questionable, and my hair was (still is) at an awkward grow-out stage after buzzing my head, but I agreed, and I’m so glad I did. Creating with other women is empowering.

Here’s the film Anna and Lisa made, if you want to watch. It’s called Dawn:

As if all those creative outlets weren’t enough, I added one more at the end of the year. I’ve had a TikTok channel for a little while, and made a couple of poetry-related videos but otherwise ignored it. TikTok is for the youth, I thought. But then I had an idea to do something a little less scripted and create some short, off-the-cuff videos about writing.

So now, every Thursday, I pop over to TikTok and record a “Thriting” video (thriting=thoughts about writing) like this: