When I was 20, I found an edition of Frank O’Hara’s selected poems and it felt like the best party I have ever been to. Up until then, I don’t think I had ever actually enjoyed a poem, so that was a major revelation for me. Here are some things I have done to celebrate:

1. In college, I spray painted ‘oh god it’s wonderful’ onto a wall…
2. When I moved to Toronto, I cut out the words, ‘I look at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world’ and arranged them onto another wall…
3. I found a mannequin on the street and brought it home and hand-wrote the poem ‘My Heart’ on its chest with a sharpie.
4. For years when I was an anonymous internet user, my blog was titled, ‘that painting’s not so blue’ and the tagline was, ‘in a sense we’re all winning (we’re alive)’
5. When I was depressed and delusional and alone in Barcelona, I went to the Travessera de Gracia to see why he would rather be ‘having a coke with you’ than sick to his stomach on that street.
6. When I was depressed and delusional and alone in New York, I stood outside a house he had lived in and felt like a creep.
7. On the day after Amy Winehouse died, I tried to write a poem in the style of ‘The Day Lady Died’, his tribute to Billie Holiday. (Good in theory.)
8. I started Shabby Doll House.
9. I wrote a book of stories and used a section of his manifesto, Personism, as the epigraph, including the words: ‘You have to take your chances and try to avoid being logical. Pain always produces logic, which is very bad for you.’
10. I brought the same copy of his selected poems to every country/city/apartment I have lived in for eight years and still have it here right now. The only consistent object in my life, maybe…
11. I gave myself permission to believe in love because of his poem, St Paul And All That? (Too much.)

Anyway, happy world poetry day. I often catch myself thinking, ‘I hate poetry’ but actually I think it is one of the best things there is.