Set aside poetry time

Here are a few more ideas about exploring poetry. I don’t know about you, but I’m great at wasting time–sometimes, I will spend as much time looking through Netflix as I will actually be watching something. One great way to make poetry a part of your day-to-day life is to set aside ten or fifteen minutes every day where you are dedicated to reading poetry in some form. Choose a usually low-key part of your day (in the morning before you start your day, right after dinner, before you watch a show, etc.) and figure out what makes those fifteen minutes feel great–for me, it’s a cup of tea and a soft blanket.

Follow your favorites

If you’re finding it difficult to find new poetry that you enjoy, a great place to start is with poets, publishers, or magazines you already love: maybe they have Twitter and they tweet about what they’re reading, or maybe they’ve shared a list of their favorite writers. This can be a great jumping off point for finding new favorites! If all else fails, in literary magazines you can read the bios of the poets you enjoy–writers will usually list a few other places they’ve been published, and that can lead you to new and exciting literary magazines, often with similar tastes and styles!

Don’t be afraid of the bandwagon

Poetry seems to be getting more and more popular in mainstream culture outlets like Buzzfeed, Bustle, and others, which is making great contemporary poetry easier to find than ever! A simple Google search will yield tons of roundups for underrated contemporary poets, must-read feminist poets, can’t-miss poetry collections by writers of colour, and other great roundups featuring a diverse and exciting array of amazing poetry! Combine this with your local library or indie bookstore, and you’ll never have a shortage of material, in April or otherwise.

National Poetry Writing Month unofficially challenges writers to compose a poem a day throughout April to celebrate NPM. You can also sometimes find this challenge called 30 Days of Poetry. Many writers fall into the challenge free-form, writing about anything and everything, but others find or create guides to get them through the month: on April 1, write a poem about your childhood; on April 2, write a poem about….

Poem in Your Pocket Day is an annual initiative organized by the Academy of American Poets to celebrate National Poetry Month. The League is very excited to be have joined this initiative for the first time in 2016, adding some of our favorite Canadian poems and poets to the mix! Poem in Your Pocket Day 2018 will be held on Thursday, April 26. 

Usually discoverable on social media under the hashtag #todayspoem, this initiative encourages users to share a poem—original or not—every day throughout April. You can find some readers and writers using the hashtag year-round, but its popularity surges in NPM and it’s a great way to discover new poets and performers through social media.

Reading challenge

Individuals or groups can use NPM as an opportunity to set a poetry reading challenge for the month—or for more than just April! Set the challenge in a way that suits your lifestyle and will be a fun way to fit more poetry into your life. Whether it’s challenging yourself to discover and read one new book of poetry in April, or whether you want to read two books a week, a reading challenge will take your poetry consumption to the next level.

National Poetry Month aims to celebrate poetry in all its forms: if you usually like to read formal poetry, try checking out something different like a novel in verse, or poetry that challenges and subverts forms; if you have only ever loved poetry in book form, try checking out a spoken word showcase or a poetry slam; if you’re a performance poet to your core, try diving into a chapbook and seeing the poetry light up those hand-sewn pages.

And if you don’t do poetry? What better time to start than now? The internet is full of incredible lists of recommendations for every non-poetry-lover: feminist poetry, spoken word poetry, emerging poets, political poets, and more. Poetry isn’t dead. There’s a poem just for you, and we know someone wants to help you find it.

Another poem, this time by Yeats from 1927, written when he was in his early sixties. It is about asking the sages of Byzantium to teach him the acceptance of old age.

A few years later, Yeats wrote about this poem in a radio script: "I am trying to write about the state of my soul, for it is right for an old man to make his soul and some of my thoughts about that subject I have put into a poem called Sailing to Byzantium."

That is no country for old men. The young

In one another’s arms, birds in the trees,

—Those dying generations—at their song,

The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,

Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long

Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.

Caught in that sensual music all neglect

Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

For every tatter in its mortal dress,

Nor is there singing school but studying

Monuments of its own magnificence;

And therefore I have sailed the seas and come

To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God’s holy fire

As in the gold mosaic of a wall,

Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,

And be the singing-masters of my soul.

Consume my heart away; sick with desire

And fastened to a dying animal

It knows not what it is; and gather me

Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take

My bodily form from any natural thing,

But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make

Of hammered gold and gold enamelling

To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;

Or set upon a golden bough to sing

To lords and ladies of Byzantium

Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

My thanks to Ronnie at "Time goes By" for the poem.

National Poetry Month

April is one of my favorite month of the year, partly because April is National Poetry Month! Here is some information from the Canadian League of Poets about the month.

If you are an educator looking to bring poetry into your classroom (now or anytime), I recommend the Poetry Society’s resources for teachers, including lesson plans that incorporate award-winning poetry by young poets, and the Young Poets Network, an online platform for young poets up to the age of 25 with articles, challenges, prompts, advice, and more.

If you are looking for books to help you integrate poetry into your classroom, try the Spoken Word Workbook, edited by Sheri-D Wilson, or Imaginative Writing: The Elements of Craft by Jane Burroway.

Two other great resources are this post from 2016, “4 Reasons to Start-Class With a Poem Each Day,” and this guide on one teacher’s implementation of starting class with a poem: “A Poem a Day: 30 Poems for Secondary Students.”

Here are some tips on how to take poetry beyond April!

Read a poem in your sudden downtime

Use your phone or tablet as a means of filling unexpected free time with poetry: you can borrow eBooks from the library and read just one poem at a time, or you could find an online literary magazine that will have regular new content for you to explore! The Puritan, Minola Review, CV2, Cosmonauts Avenue, and Plenitude are just a few great Canadian literary magazines that have online poetry content. You can even take it a step further and share the poems you like on your own social media!

Take it down a notch: try chapbooks, instead of books

Chapbooks are a perfect way of settling into poetry when you have some free time on your day off, but not enough time to really get into a full book. Chapbooks are smaller collections of writing, usually between 10 and 25 pages, that allow writers to explore and experiment with their writing in new and exciting ways. As an added bonus, there are many artisan chapbooks presses out there producing not just beautiful poetry, but aesthetically beautiful books, with hand-sewn pages and high-quality paper to complement the work within! Check out Anstruther Press, Desert Pets Press, above/ground, words(on)pages, or Puddles of Sky Press–just a few of the great active chapbook presses publishing in Canada right now–to get your chapbook collection started!

Take a break or cleanse your palette with poetry

It can feel overwhelming to try to read a book of poetry or an entire issue of a literary magazine, but don’t forget that poems themselves are often bite-sized! You can always use five minutes to read a single poem once, just to redirect your mental efforts for a moment. It’s suggested you should get up to stretch and move around throughout the day to keep your body happy–so why not keep your mind happy with a little poetry stretch every now and then, too? 

A poem on Ageing from http://www.dennydavis.net/poemfiles/aging2b.htm 

My forgetter's getting better
But my rememberer is broke
To you, that may seem funny
But, to me, that is no joke.

For when I'm 'here' I'm wondering
If I really should be 'there'
And, when I try to think it through,
I haven't got a prayer!

Often times I walk into a room,
Say "what am I here for?"
I wrack my brain, but all in vain
A zero is my score.

At times I put something away
Where it is safe, but, Gee!
The person it is safest from
Is, generally, me!

When shopping I may see someone,
Say "Hi" and have a chat,
Then, when the person walks away
I ask myself, "who was that?"

Yes, my forgetter's getting better
While my rememberer is broke,
And it's driving me plumb crazy
And that isn't any joke.

P.S. Send this to everyone you know because I don't remember who sent it to me! (noted Denny)

Women's Risk in LIfe by the Chartered Insurance Institute Part 4

Potential generic areas of intervention for the profession, identified in this interim report include the following:

·       Education and awareness – Educating and raising life risks awareness amongst young men and women, and of the risks associated with not engaging with, and taking ownership for managing, their respective risks in life.

·       Equality oriented solutions – Access to risk solutions, including advice, services and products, that allow for equality between men and women – such as savings and investment products that address individual’s needs, circumstances and risk appetites – even when earnings’ disparities exist within relationships.

·       Specific risk mitigation – Specific risk solutions for particular circumstances to allow women in complex situations (such as dependent partners suffering violence) to both protect and empower themselves.

·       Employer solutions – Engaging with employers, and developing new and improving existing workplace risk solutions for employees – these may benefit solutions funded by employer or employee funded options, both aiming to support closing the women’s protection gap.

·       Effective engagement – Improved engagement with women, empathetic with women’s approach to risk, addressing their expectations and preferences in regard to informed and individual advice – through face to face, telephone as well as new and technology-based interactions.

·       Building trust and relevance – Improving the image of the profession and making it more appealing to women.

Women's Risk in Life by the Chartered Insurance Institute Part 3

Women will experience longer life expectancy, longer periods of ill-health in later life, and a greater need for care, resulting in higher and more unpredictable costs of care than men. However, many women are not preparing for the costs of care

·   A girl born in 2014 can expect to live to 83.2, nearly four years longer than a boy born on the same day.

·   Women can expect to face 19 years of ill-health typically – from age 64 until age 83 – three years more than a man. On average women will need help to carry out basic tasks for nearly 3 years, compared with 1.5 years for a man.

·   At age 65, women can expect to pay £70,000 on care throughout old age, compared with just £37,000 for a man. A woman entering a care home between the age of 65 and 74 can expect to stay for four years, at an average cost of £132,000. Costs in some areas are far higher, with an average of £186,000 in the South East. These figures are the average, and some may face longer stays and far higher costs.

·   Over half of women in their 30s have not thought about how they will pay for care costs.

Women are marginally more risk-averse than men – but evidence is mixed and the impact of other factors such as education and income level seems to be more significant

• Women are slightly more risk-averse and slightly more ‘present-biased’, but this is largely explained by income and motherhood.
• Women are more likely to report that they lack knowledge relating to financial decisions and to want information and advice.

Women, as a result of lower incomes and greater insecurity at work, are less likely to be saving for a pension than men and there is a very large gap by retirement

·   During the years in which women have young children, they have fewer savings than men, reducing their resilience to economic shocks. Men in their late 30s have 60% more in savings than women the same age.

·   Men are more likely to have a private or occupational pension, and they save much more. Women are more likely to have a Defined Benefit (DB) scheme than men, due to a greater likelihood of working in public sector, but access to DB schemes is falling. The average man retires with a pension pot five times higher than the pot an average woman retires with.

Women’s lower savings and pensions wealth means they are more likely to be dependent on others and to be less financially resilient when relationships break down

·   80% of women under 30 agree they are not saving enough for their retirement, compared with 75% of men.

·   Most women in the bottom 40% of households with a household income have no pension wealth at all.

·   Women are more likely to say they will be reliant on the state pension as their main source of income in retirement (36% compared with 30%) – women who are divorced, separated or widowed are particularly likely to be reliant on the state pension.

·   The average divorced woman has less than a third of the pension wealth of the average divorced man – £9,000 compared with £30,000.

·   Most separated woman have no pension wealth at all.