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An invitation from SD’s new poet laureate: Tell me the what and the why of your life [1]

['Bruce Roseland', 'More From Author', 'November']

Date: 2023-11-04

EDITOR’S NOTE: This commentary is adapted with permission from a speech by Bruce Roseland, South Dakota’s new poet laureate, in September 2023 at the South Dakota Festival of Books in Deadwood.

For the next four years, I am the ambassador for poetry in South Dakota, and I take this seriously. I see much of living one’s life as art. Poetry is art through words.

I ranch and farm the same land as my great-grandfather. He didn’t write anything down, and I always wondered what it would be like to have him tell me about a day in his life. I’m sure he would’ve thought it was just ho-hum, no big deal. But that was back in the 1880s, and it would have been remarkable.

That’s why I got started writing. I thought, maybe my ancestors didn’t tell their stories, but I could start recording my experiences for my grandchildren.

Poetry on the Road South Dakota Poet Laureate Bruce Roseland and other South Dakota State Poetry Society member poets and special guests will visit towns across South Dakota throughout 2023 and 2024. See the schedule at sdpoetry.org/poetry-on-the-road.

It ended up that my way of sharing stories is through free-verse poetry. I started recording my times and the stories I’ve been told by neighbors.

So that’s the why — that’s what motivated me, because I wanted the future to know. I wanted my great-grandchildren to know my stories. At that time I didn’t have grandchildren, but they were my audience.

Poetry is storytelling. Poetry helps us think clearly. Poetry leads us to truth. Writing and sharing poetry are powerful ways to convey what we value, what’s in our lives, our passions.

By listening to the poetry of others, we find commonalities and step into their shoes, walk their mile, see what they see, hear what they hear, feel what they feel. Poetry does not have to be complicated, but it has to be honest. It has to come from the heart.

I encourage people from all walks of life to write. That is my goal as ambassador of poetry for the next four years: encourage people to write poetry and share it with each other. If you write and keep it to yourself, it’s just a diary. It takes courage to read and share your work publicly.

I want people to tell me the why, tell me about a day in your life. There’s no such thing as an unremarkable day in anyone’s life. That I firmly believe.

It’s hard to write a book. Writing a good poem is also hard to do, but I think it’s more achievable. A poem is something we can write in the between times of our life, 15 minutes here, 15 minutes there. Over a course of a lifetime, we end up recording what’s in our heart, what’s in our life, and we’re able to share that forward into the future, to give this gift of ourselves, our time and place. We’re allowing others to know us, to find what connects us.

That’s what poetry does. It connects us. That is the great power of words as art — finding our connection and our common humanity. When we write a poem, we help the arc of history bend a little further toward the light.

So tell me the what, tell me the why of your life. I want to hear your stories.

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[1] Url: https://southdakotasearchlight.com/2023/11/04/an-invitation-from-sds-new-poet-laureate-tell-me-the-what-and-the-why-of-your-life/

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