go do something sensible

Daniel Zomparelli: What advice would you have for young poets?

George Bowering: If you fuck up, screw ‘em. Actually I was talking to a 15 year old poet, and the father told me to give him advice, and I said “stop writ­ing poetry and go do some­thing sen­si­ble.” He’ll either stop writ­ing poetry, or con­tinue to write poetry and that’s that. Oh, also another piece of advice, read 100 books for every poem… and write a poem every day. Ha!

- George Bowering, in interview with Daniel Zomparelli on the Geist Blog. You can read the whole interview here.