Thursday, July 24, 2008

Kay Ryan - New US Poet Laureate

If you haven't heard, this October, the US will have a new woman poet laureate! Read more about her here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/17/MN8411QTIU.DTL

My favorite part of the interview/story is this line:

"But when I was 30, I realized I wasn't going to avoid being this poet thing," she said.

Ryan happens to also be an English teacher, like yours truly, and she's 62. So, all you women out there who haven't "made it" in your field yet, know the big prize can come at any time. I've got 22 years to go! I'm so excited about how much I can do in that much time and feel a whole lot better about the fact that I "wasted" so many years suppressing my art trying to fit in to the world of public education when I really wanted to shout and run around like my hair was on fire.

Question of the day: When could you no longer avoid recognizing your art?
Let me know your story! Either post a comment below or e-mail me directly at Mel Edwards Connect [at] Yahoo [dot] com.

Until later,
keep creating!
-Mel.

1 comment:

Judy Rodman said...

I had been an artist in music for many years. The light bulb about my being able to be a creative and effective vocal coach for others came when I lost all my other music business income (record and songwriting deals) as the industry was going through changes.

A session friend of mine on the road with Lynrd Skynyrd ask me for help in hitting a rock high note she was having trouble with. I was surprised that she asked, and that I was able to help her nail it.

That's when I put an ad in the paper as a vocal coach, and the rest is, as they say, history... I created my own method which is wildly effective and has become commercially successful.

My point is, it was the closed doors that led me to recognize my artful ability to teach voice... a door I never otherwise would have opened.