Tweetspeak Poetry

Take Your Poet to Work Day: Poets Who Didn’t Want to Be at Work

By 8 Comments

Take Your Poet to Work Day Walt Whitman

Now that Take Your Poet to Work Day has reached the ripe old age of three years, we feel like we can begin to detect some patterns in the way our ready-for-work poets behave. This year, above all, it seems our poets most wanted to break free of the workplace. Or rather, perhaps they were eager to get away to somewhere that felt more like poet work (though many of even the most famous poets had day jobs). You can hear the reluctance with T.S. Eliot, who was once a banker, not being so sure he wanted to be back in the office:

Walt Whitman tried to take in all the changes in the newsroom since his days as a newspaper man:

So I don’t know. Maybe it was because we invited the poets to the coffee shop before the big day, but it seemed like they wanted to make a break for it and go back to the coffee shop, go out to the garden, or attend the Alpenfest. And it seems the best place for a poet on Take Your Poet to Work Day was the library—starting in Scotland.

All of the #TweetspeakPoetry poets! #TakeYourPoetToWork #poettowork #poettoworkday @tspoetry

A photo posted by Raymond Public Library, MS (@raymondlibraryms) on

Poets in the LIBRARY! #TakeYourPoetToWork #July15 #poettowork #poettoworkday @tspoetry

A photo posted by Raymond Public Library, MS (@raymondlibraryms) on

But there were those poets who got in the car,

 

buckled their seatbelts,
and went to work.

Sara’s helping with collection development #takeyourpoettoworkday #poettowork A photo posted by Amelia (@litjrzygrl) on

Even when work was at the beautiful Museo Quinta Los Ombues in Buenos Aires, Argentina. (Don’t you wish you and your poet worked there?)

Thanks to Prufrock: The Film, T.S. Eliot was a popular worker this year. When the filing gig didn’t work out, he tried his hand at jewelry design.

 

Rumi was more interested in the arts, spending his day at theatre practice and the piano.

 

Shakespeare was being Shakespeare.

 

Meanwhile, Maya Angelou made off in search of a good metaphor.
We invited the world to celebrate, and the world answered.

 

Those who didn’t find their favorite poet in our coloring book put their creative selves to work and made their own.
And some folks (my own mother, to be precise) took things to another level altogether, putting Emily in stitches, Rumi in rainbows, and Poe in plush.

And at the end of the day, whether leaving the office or coming in from the woods, our poets found their way home, even if by a road less traveled.

 

Will Willingham
Latest posts by Will Willingham (see all)

Try Every Day Poems...

About Will Willingham

I used to be a claims adjuster, helping people and insurance companies make sense of loss. Now, I train other folks with ladders and tape measures to go and do likewise. Sometimes, when I’m not scaling small buildings or crunching numbers with my bare hands, I read Keats upside down. My first novel is Adjustments.

Comments

  1. L. L. Barkat says

    It delights me to see all this imagination, and poets accompanying people from Scotland to Colorado to Little Rock to Argentina and so on and so on.

    Happy 🙂

    Reply

  4. Jody Lee Collins says

    LL and team–LW–fantastic tradition you’ve started. I enjoyed reading along.
    (Alas, my ‘take your poet to coffee’ was dashed by my anniversary event on the same day.)

    Reply

  5. Suzanne says

    So lovely to read this and see the adventures of the poets. Every part of me feels like it’s smiling.
    Can’t wait for next year 🙂

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. […] week, we celebrated Take Your Poet to Work day and by all accounts, everyone (and their poets) had a wonderful time. Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, and Rumi all […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *