I can literally hear the shrieks from many of you upon reading the title of this blog post.
Poetry, the dreaded. Poetry is difficult to understand. Poetry, that unit in English class that brought your grade from a healthy B to a C, which made your parents take away your phone privileges for a week.
Would it help you to read poetry if you saw real reasons why any and all of us who use words to create content of any sort ought to embrace and regularly read poetry in a similar way to how Robin Williams character in “Dead Poet’s Society” suggests? At the bottom of this blog post I have included a video with some words from that movie about poetry the Apple Corporation used in their advertising campaign.
9 Examples of how reading poetry will help you be a more successful writer and content creator
1) Samuel Taylor Coleridge famously wrote, “Poetry: the best words in the best order.” Many of us believe him and practice poetry for the joy of polishing our words into short, enjoyable and yes, easy to understand and/or natural to make us want to stretch our understanding of life, this world and one another.
2.) Poetry is often concise -which will help you write better headlines, catchy slogans and synopsise main points you want to convey.
3.) The Harvard Business Review stated “Poetry teaches us to wrestle with and simplify complexity.” Harman Industries founder Sidney Harman once told The New York Times, “I used to tell my senior staff to get me poets as managers. Poets are our original systems thinkers. They look at our most complex environments and they reduce the complexity to something they begin to understand.”
4. ) Reading poetry gives us more unusual topics of conversations, videos and written content. Reading a poem in the morning and planting it into your subconscious mind will ignite you to approach your content differently – which is always a good means to improve your content and writing development.
5.)A Fast Company article visualizing a post-Covid19 Pandemic World leads off with a quote from Rainer Maria Rilke followed by these words about how poets and poetry reading people make for better business leaders: “Poetry requires of its readers a different way of thinking, more expansive than usual, more flexible, more nuanced; a way to tune in to undercurrents, accept ambiguity and the absence of answers—embrace lack of closure and relish complexity and uncertainty.”
6.) Reading poetry increases one’s curiosity and the desire to ask questions. This is especially good for people writing sales copy. How does this poem relate back to what I am trying to communicate to possible clients and students?
7.) Memorizing poetry about success and overcoming obstacles helps the brain to stretch and grow. Suggestions for such poems include “Success” by Ralph Waldo Emerson; Triumph May Be of Several Kinds by Emily Dickinson or In Praise of Pain by Heather McHugh.
8.) Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft said “Poetry is akin to ‘that force created within us that seeks out the unimaginable, that gets us up to solve the impossible.” This sort of inspiration and motivation helps me get up and write yet another blog post, social media post, thank you note… every day – to tune into the creative life force that creates poetry as well as a note to someone who is grieving.
9.) Discover the pleasure of the sounds of poetry through watching videos of poets such as former California Poet Laureate Dana Gioia (who is also a graduate of Stanford School of Business and worked in the business sector for 15 years before pursuing a literary and academic life. Recognizing really good writing through the voice of Dana Gioia will help you to hear your own writing improve.
Your poetry reading challenge:
I challenge you, even or especially for the skeptics among you, to visit some of the links I am providing here and consider how poetry has the power to help you improve in every single kind of content creation you are attempting.
Reading one poem a day will change your life in an infinite number of ways.
Reading (or listening to) one poem today, even if it is the last poem you ever read, will impact you as well.
I am grateful you are even considering it. Thank you so much for reading this far.
Poetry Resources, including references from this article:
From The Poetry Foundation:
Poems to Read When You Get Stuffed in a Gym Locker (success and anti-success poems):
Success Poem list frpm DiscoverPoetry.com
Dana Gioia YouTube Channel Playlist of Poetry Recitation. His voice and delivery are incredibly enjoyable.:
Fast Company Article about CEO’s and Poetry:
Julie JordanScott is a Creative Life Coach, an award-winning storyteller, actor and poet whose photos and mixed media art graces the walls of collectors across the United States. Her writing has appeared on the New York Times Best Sellers List, the Amazon best sellers list and on American Greetings Holiday cards (and other greeting cards). She currently lives in a manse in Sussex, NJ, where she is working on finishing her most recent book project, hugging trees daily and enjoys having random inspirational conversations with strangers.
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Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world. She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed-media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon!
My original livestream periscope show, writing and poetry prompts in the park is being revived. It may not always be in parks AND it will always be poetry, curated by me, and offered to you with prompts to guide your creative process.
Now is the time of year when I feel free to settle into my recliner and write, ignoring everything else. We cocoon and it’s cool. We cover up with scarves and softness. We have permission.
Join me, now, on this word adventure.