The good people over at Blogging Poet were kind enough to nominate me for the Poet Laureate of the Internet award they give out every year. I'm very honored, however I can only say this:
PLEASE DON'T VOTE FOR ME.
There are so many other poets, men and women who live, die and eat poetry every day as teachers, as writers, as readers and they are far more deserving of this award then I could ever be. The past winners, Ron Silliman, Jilly Dybka and Amy King are poets in the finest and realest sense of the word who have devoted their life to the art and the craft of poetry, and all that this devotion means. They live it every day.
Fortunately, I do many, many things for work and pleasure, and I've been able to make a living as a film writer for the last couple years. I can't tell you how grateful I am that I have been lucky enough to do this. When I was younger, no, but as I get older I see how truly rare it is to be able to work in a craft whose possibilities, given the right circumstances, are endless. Film is, in many ways, the true love of my life. Perhaps many movies now are not what I wish them to be, but as long as the possibility exists for me to help in creating the ones I've dreamed since I was a child - sound, vision, drama, comedy, and, yes, poetry - no matter what form the movie may take, then I'm in as long as someone will keep me around.
In any case, the films that I write, the photographs I take, the poems that I scribble down here are merely pieces of a whole. This place is my living notebook, not dedicated to any one art or craft, but whatever is available to me in the moment, like a kid who scribbles in his journal late at night when he's supposed to be sleeping. That's all this is and all, really, I've ever been, that kid, flashlight on, scribbling away beneath his covers because he can't sleep.
Hopefully the desire to share, to communicate in these ways through this medium for all to visit or discard as they see fit, keeps me honest, real and centered so I never lose sight of why I wanted to be an artist to begin with.
So, please, vote for one of the other candidates, they are fine poets and far more deserving of this award.
If you're interested you can check them out here:
bloggingpoet.squarespace.com/bloggingpoetcom/ category/poet-laureate-of-the-blogosphere
I'd post as a hyperlink, but I don't even know how to post hyperlinks.
-Levari
