I get up and try to follow their advice

rob mclennan: What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

Lorna Goodison: The two best pieces of advice I’ve heard were given to me by my mother Doris who’d say to me whenever I told her I was off to give a reading, “Go and be yourself,” and by Jacob Lawrence, the great African American painter, who would always say to me, when I took a class with him at the School of the Art Students League in New York, “Just do the work”. Most days I get up and try to follow their advice.

- Lorna Goodison, answering rob mclennan's 12 or 20 questions over on his blog. You can read the whole thing here.