In his 2005 essay collection A Man Without a Country, Kurt Vonnegut, with his characteristic chatty precision, neatly summed up the value of art: 

Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something. 

Of course, as a poet and a professor of Creative Writing, much of my life is about trying to write – and helping others to write – very good poems indeed. But I’m also an inveterate dabbler in random creative practices whenever time allows, and I can most definitely affirm that each one gives an enormous reward. 

Recently, for instance, I was speaking at a conference at the University of Canberra in Australia and attended a workshop with the book Artist, Printer, Designer and Visual Poet Caren Florance. The results of the workshop will never be shared, but I shall treasure them always as a messy reminder of unbridled joy in inks, paper and playing about in good company. 

I mention this as, at the start of a new year, we tend to be bombarded with injunctions to make resolutions and to become a little bit “better”, whatever that may mean. Many of the suggestions we receive will unfortunately involve a lot of time and or money. However, one thing that can be done for the price of a pen and a notebook, and can be fitted into odd moments on the bus or while listening to hold music from an understaffed call centre, is to create art. 

Easy for me to say, right? But what if you’re not imaginative? What if you don’t know what to put on that scary blank page? What if you don’t know what to draw or to write about? 

Well, the thing is, although I’ve got more than a dozen books to my name, along with several hundred individually published poems (and a couple of thousand that haven’t been published), I’m not imaginative at all. Rather, I pay attention to what I see, to what I hear and to what I read. I find the bits that interest me, and once I’ve found them, I play with them in the form of words on the page. 

As for what they’re about – well, that can emerge as they settle into some sort of order. I’m someone who takes pleasure in the craft of shaping such things into shiny poems, but a more universal human joy may be found in this action of creation and exploration which starts the process – something which, incidentally, generative AI will never threaten. 

So, if I can suggest one thing to improve your life this year, it is, as Kurt Vonnegut said, to practice art, and there’s a growing body of research that attests to its efficacy. If I can take that suggestion a little bit further, I’d say that maybe you could share it.  

It’s very easy, amidst all the overwhelming challenges, both at home and globally, to see art as a luxury, perhaps even frivolous. However, when we look at how people have always used art to express themselves to others, and to comfort themselves and others, the real value of the creative spark we all have – and which we can all share – cannot be underestimated. It’s how we can assert our shared humanity in a troubled world. 

Have a creative 2024. 

For more information on Oz’s approach to creativity, listen to his recent interview with Canberra’s Artsound FM. 

Oz Hardwick is a Professor of Creative Writing at Leeds Trinity University.