April 11, 2023

A few words on kindness

by Amar Patel in poetry, creative writing

Candlestick Press has produced several gorgeous poetry anthologies since 2008. Pamphlets designed to be gifted, carried around and cherished for years to come. For always-emerging writers like myself, their themed callouts are great opportunities to gain experience and build confidence.

One of the most recent ones was “kindness”. Although my entry wasn’t selected, I was pleased by how I worked with the constraints of the competition – no more than 16 lines of 10 words at most – while injecting a spritely rhythm along the way. It’s my hop, skip and jump of an appeal to the world. Pass it on…

You can buy the collection here.

Mary & Elizabeth (1929) by Käthe Kollwitz. To learn more about his extraordinary artist, click on the image and listen to Katy Hessel in conversation with Dorothy Price, a specialist in German Expressionism, Weimar Culture and Black British Art

DON’T TAKE MY KINDNESS FOR WEAKNESS (SHE SAID)

Or I’ll close up and turn away, all ruthless instead

Ever watched frowns become smiles, light piercing the shutter

Give thought to another, you’ll make their heart flutter

It matters, you know, doing something for nothing

What you can, when you can, forget who’s deserving

Make the tea or coffee, do someone a favour

Hold the door open, flatter a stranger … I dare ya

Offer a smile for no reason

Bring in the season of less getting even

It’s like living by giving till the giving is receiving

Start a chain reaction – ka-boom! – seeing is believing

Kindness is the currency that never loses its value

Can’t afford to spend it? You can’t afford not to!

This gift is best shared right out of the blue

See good in others? Now there’s good in you too

Amar Patel

August 19, 2021

A poem for all ages

by Amar Patel in creative writing, poetry

Amar Patel’s poem in Ealing Broadway Shopping centre, one of the selected submissions for Clear Channel x POCC campaign. The theme for August is “age"

Earlier this month I saw a callout on the Instagram page of POCC to submit a piece of art or writing on the theme of “age”. POCC is a brilliant platform and network amplifying the work of people of colour who are either part of the creative industries or hope to be.

They have already collaborated with outdoor media owner Clear Channel to place “artist-in-residence” work on digital billboards across the UK on topics including mental health and Pride (specifically drag queen and activist Marsha P Johnson).

I would never consider myself a poet, much less an artist, but I do try to be poetic in my turn of phrase. And why else would you be a writer if not to surprise and delight the reader? As the author Octavia Butler often reminded herself, “Make people think, feel and know. Make them feel, feel, feel.”

I am thrilled to say that my piece was accepted and is fleetingly on display across the UK in the following places until the evening of Sunday 22 August.

Amar Patel

July 1, 2020

“[Poetry is] a kind of an ingenious nonsense”

by Amar Patel in marketing, poetry

SCDP creative director Don Draper (Jon Hamm) writing in AMC’s Mad Men. One of the books Draper turns to in his existential crisis is poet Frank O’Hara’s Meditations in an Emergency — SCDP creative director Don Draper (Jon Hamm) writing in AMC’s Mad Men. One of the books Draper turns to in his existential crisis is poet Frank O’Hara’s *Meditations in an Emergency*

Sir Isaac Newton said that somewhere around the late 16th Century, quoting his teacher Isaac Barrow. Although uttered as a backhanded criticism – with mild disdain at the obfuscation in the craft – it’s that virtuosity, that lyrical alchemy and affecting wonder, that brands have coveted since the early heyday of advertising.

From the poem in a 19th-century Warren Blacking’s shoe polish ad, to the worldplay in classic slogan “Beanz Meanz Heinz” and Dead Poets Society teacher John Keating (Robin Williams) invoking Walt Whitman in an Apple ad as he asks, “What will your verse be?”, examples abound.

In his book The Science of Story, Will Storr explains how the weapons of poetry – metaphor, simile etc – deployed in prose writing activate our neural regions, giving the language deeper meaning and sensation. That’s the benefit of choosing “she shouldered the burden” over “she carried the burden”, for example.

“A successful poem plays on our associative networks as a harpist plays on strings,” he writes. “By the meticulous placing of a few simple words, they brush gently against deeply buried memories, emotions, joys, traumas, which are stored in the form of neural networks that light up as we read. In this way, poets wring out rich chords of meaning that resonate so profoundly we struggle to fully explain why they’re moving us so.”

But is verse in an advert really a poem if its goal is to sell? This age-told tension between art and commerce goes under the microscope again in a new BBC Radio Four documentary hosted by copywriter and poet Rishi Dastidar. In it, he traces the history of “words pressed into service on behalf of sales”, drawing on the musings of WH Auden, George Orwell, Clive James and Don Draper among others.

Amar Patel