Designed by Words Writers' Workshop

In 2011, we featured an interview with poet Carlomar Arcangel Daoana about his third collection of poems, Clairvoyance. He spoke of readers who would stumble upon poetry on their own, who would read poetry books the way they would approach a hobby. To these readers, poetry would be pleasurable, enlightening, fun.

On the importance of writing and readership, he says:

“What is important for me as writer is the actual work: sitting on the chair, typing away, producing something. You can attend workshops, readings and all those things but the ultimately work should still be the writing—and the reading, of course, which is crucial to the creative process.

I have given up on trying to reach for an audience. People who love, or at least have a temperament for, poetry will find ways to gravitate towards it, as other people would to ikebana or homeopathy. It’s this audience that I primarily seek, but only after the fact of the book as already published.

If ever people should encounter poetry, it should be in classrooms that feature, one hopes, the climate of information-gathering, learning and knowledge appreciation. I don’t think that anyone is born allergic to the art form. It is important, however, that we have teachers who are equipped to teach poetry to students and not destroy their potential enthusiasm for it. To be honest, I’ve seen people who live decent, respectable lives without poetry. But why stop at decent if, by reading a poem, you can spiritualize your life in a way that no religion could.“

Read more of the interview here.

Would you love poetry more if you knew how to read it? Learn more on March 24, 2012 when we hold “Verses to Nourish the Soul: A Poetry Appreciation Class” to be led by Mr. Daoana. High school literature teachers very much welcome.  To register and for more details, please read more here.

“I think our lives as readers are more or less “shadow lives” to our lives as writers. There is a deep connection, though we may not be immediately conscious of a specific influence. That’s why it’s so important we read literature, as a culture and a nation—writers truly are the conscience of the cultures from which they write. If we respond to images and sound bites rather than sustained narratives that reflect and interpret the meaning of our lives, we lose our way in the long story of our generational histories.” –Jayne Anne Phillips in “The Sound of the Novel,” The Writer

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