During this year’s Grammys, Taylor Swift announced the release of her next album, The Tortured Poets Department. It would be out on April 19^th.

Today.

The speculation burst forth with a frenzy of fans and media types trying to figure out what the album was all about.

With a track listing of…

Fortnight, The Tortured Poets Department, My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys, Down Bad, So Long, London, But Daddy I Love Him, Fresh Out the Slammer, Florida!!!, Guilty as Sin?, Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?, I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can), Loml, I Can Do It with a Broken Heart, The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived, The Alchemy, Clara Bow, and All’s Fair in Love and Poetry, there were four extra editions released, each with a new song. The Manuscript, The Bolter, The Albatross, and The Black Dog.

Speculation abounded.

Fans quickly figured out that April 19^th was Poetry and The Creative Mind Day and wondered what one had to do with the other. But as Swifties know, there is always something, and one does have to do with the other.

Poetry and the Creative Mind Day was new to me, as I’m sure it was to many others. While I haven’t been sheltered as a writer, I’ve just been too busy writing and releasing to indulge in groups, festivals, and days concerning writers of all styles.

Poetry and the Creative Mind Day is on April 19 every year to honour the bright minds of poetry. Whether it be songs, haikus, limericks, sonnets, elegies, or epics, poetry has the power to affect and can stretch human creativity and expression beyond its limits.

As a creative artist, when I saw her first post for the album, I thought this, which I posted to my social media. “As a creative artist, this makes me feel like I’ve not written enough, and I’ve written a lot! And, since I’ve just started getting into poetry, after writing songs for decades, I really feel like this is a sign that I need to get my ass in gear and get more written this year.”

 

Here we are, April 19^th, and I’m busy listening to her album instead.

Have I been writing since she teased the first post? Non-fiction, yes. Some poems and songs with some opinion pieces and essays thrown in. But not fiction. I’ve been busy getting the next book ready for release in September and typing up the next novel for next year. It wasn’t until this month that I got my butt in gear and started writing the next novel, the follow-up to the second book I wrote last year.

I can only keep my fingers crossed that it continues and I get my massive to-do list, seen in the last post, done this year.