It’s still a brand new year, not even half a month old, after all, and it’s a good time as any, including the last day of this new year, to make a change.
In 2011, at exactly 8:58 p.m. on Dec. 31 the year before, English author Neil Gaiman wrote in his digital journal, “May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you readsome fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art—write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.
On New Year’s Eve, I was in Bangkok, listening to the booming fireworks. I couldn’t see them from where I sat by the lotus pond of the Sukhothai Hotel, but I could hear them, like bombs falling from the sky at wartime. I could also see their reflection on the glass windows of the hotel wing across from me and on the dark surface of the pond.
Here’s where poetry comes in. Don’t ask me what poetry is for, there is no right answer. Nobody reads a poem to know what might happen, poetry just is—the journey, not the destination. Each line does not necessarily lead you to the next by way of logic. Sometimes, it’s just the sound, the connections between words, the visual conjured with every phrase, the feelings evoked between the lines. But poetry—or the practice of it—does make better writers.
I suppose climate change, now more undeniable than ever with every storm or drought or a heatwave in the winter regions, is also pushing the agenda of kindness. Judging from the humanitarian crises we needed to confront in 2022, we’re going to have to be even kinder this year or kind enough to pool resources together to come to the aid of those who may suffer the brunt of climate catastrophes worsening at every turn.
In “New Year,” Scottish poet Carol Ann Duffy wrote, “I drop the dying year behind me like a shawl / and let it fall. The urgent fireworks fling themselves / against the night, flowers of desire, love’s fervency. / Out of the space around me, standing here, I shape / your absent body against mine. You touch me as the giving air.”
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