Celebrate the Ordinary - Joan Lennon

Last autumn Andrew Motion published an article titled Top 10 tips on being a successful poet - and this week I've been trying (unsuccessfully) to tidy up (i.e. cull) my file of "Oh - this is good - I might want to refer to this some time" and found it again.  And you know, the article is good, and though I don't remember particularly noticing number 4 the first time round, it's the one that speaks specially to me just now -

Honour the miraculousness of the ordinary. What we very badly need to remember is that the things right under our noses are extraordinary, fascinating, irreplaceable, profound and just kind of marvellous.

Look at the things in the foreground and relish stuff that can lose its glow by being familiar. In fact, re-estranging ourselves to familiar things seems to be a very important part of what poetry can do. 

I would change the words "poet" and "poetry" to "writer" and "writing".  And then I would say, "Yes."

Joan Lennon's website.
Joan Lennon's blog.