At The End of The Day

Poetry is a universal language of rhyme and reason. As a poet, I write to make sense of chaos. It was William Wordsworth who once claimed that the poet’s duty was to recollect, in tranquility, thoughts made in state of Sublime chaos. It is undeniable as humanity faces a global crisis currently of war, disease and near-madness, that we all could use moments of tranquility to not only recollect, but to repair ourselves. This is what my poetry does for people, my poetry helps people to reflect and to heal. My Poetry is honest, raw and passionate. The current state of the world is desensitising people to the ability to feel the lightness of a moment of tranquility in which, like gazing into a stream, one can reflect and catch a wave of a thought, only for their unfaithful mind to elope onto another.

As a high school student, I became frustrated with the limited curriculum offered for English Literature. I desired more than just the Romantics and other such cult-like groupings of ‘politicised poets’ such as The Beat Generation etc. I wanted poetry that spoke of authentic human experience, poetry that reflected the fragility and the complexity of the human psyche. Realising I was getting nowhere sitting at my desk, chewing my pen at an inaccessible print-out of a Lord Byron poem, I ran out of the classroom to chase poetry that wasn’t static, to chase poetry that was ...alive. What found me along my great escape, was a fountain pen and a notebook of my own. I let my heart spill itself onto the papers, and after exposing myself to friends and my poetry group at Cambridge University, I realised I had a raw talent for poetry, and most importantly, my poetry affected other people more than it affected me- and indeed, it affected me greatly for it was such a personal revelation of deep parts of my psyche; the crisis, the mindfulness, the repairing and restoring, the sometimes falling, the picking-myself-back-together – my poetry was a mirror of myself and other people related to my poetry because I am naturally a mirror of the people and the environment around me, and therefore, people saw themselves in me, despite my unique perspective as a South African girl in London.

Realising the necessity of Art like mine, having reviewed other poetry instagram accounts to survey the space, I took the opportunity to share my poetry on Instagram. My projection for the immediate future is to expand onto other social media platforms such as TikTok and Youtube, and even a podcast on Spotify.

My intention for readers accessing my poetry is to emphasise the experience of escapism that is characteristic of my whimsical, rabbit-hole-filled poetry. How I plan to emphasise the experience of reading my poetry is by providing an intimate engagement with my readers and followers. The aforementioned applications provide tools such as live video recordings, polls, captions and comments to communicate with readers and followers in real-time, this allows for a live-reading and a discussion of the poetry as oppossed to the passive reading that occurs in reading a ‘fixed’ post such as a typed-up or printed version of the poem. Indeed, I always felt most rewarded by a piece of poetry when readers could interpret from the poem, a message unlike the one delivered to me upon my own contemplation of the poem. Additionally, my next agenda after maximising social-media engagement with my poetry is to design a blog website. This will help create a ‘stable’ for my Art; a fixed and dependable go-to location for readers to access more than just typed and printable-versions of the poems they might have missed in a post or live recording, but also articles of analysis that provide a personal insight into my artistic process as well as contact information and the option to join a mailing-list.

I plan to establish a general mailing-list that readers of my blog website can subscribe to via a link on the website. Subscribers on this mailing list will receive emails updating them of new blog posts as well as social media posts. As a premium service, susbscribers will be given the option to engage with a monetized monthly subscription that will help me monetize my passion. The upgrades offered through this members-only service include pre-scheduled hour-long one-to-one audio or video calls for readers uninterested in a public engagement or, simply preferring a more intimate question-and-answer session or simply providing commentary or critique.

In an ideal world independent of cyber dependency, I would maximise the ‘experience’ of my poetry by collaborating with relevant business partners such as cosy cafes and dimly-lit karoake bars that offer open-mic sessions and neon signs, as these environments can be curated to offer a viable atmosphere for an engagement with my intimate-kind of poetry. I would organise these meetings via the aforementioned members-only premium subscription.

This would hopefully create a community of like-minded readers and poetry-lovers or just curious minds interested in discussion and debate and therefore, likely interested in a full and sensuous experience of poetry that enages the mind through sensation, acoustic and visual arrangement.

I am very passionate about my poetry, yet as an artist in modern times, the anxiety of defending an ancint tradition in a futuristic, and almost dystopian world, can sometimes be consuming, however I remain adamant in my intention to self-publish my poetry and reach millions of eyes and souls because I believe my poetry has the ability to induce excitement, tranquility and contemplation in people for I have witnessed it and seflessly dedicated myself to distributing my antidote.