Arts

Gay poet vows to write an endless poem about love until the day he dies, because ‘love is the only way to survive’

gay poet Alex Dimitrov

Alex Dimitrov, the gay poet writing an endless poem called “Love”. (Alex Dimitrov)

Gay poet and astrologer Alex Dimitrov is writing an endless poem called Love, one tweet at a time, continued “every day for the rest of however long he lives”.

Dimitrov is an American poet living in New York City, and is one half of the Twitter sensation Astro Poets.

Originally, the endless poem wasn’t endless at all. Dimitrov wrote a poem called “Love”, which was originally published in The American Poetry Review in January, 2020.

He told PinkNews: “Once I started, I never wanted to finish. Of course, I had to because it was going to be published. And then one night I thought to myself, well, isn’t that why we have Twitter? The poem could continue indefinitely.

“So I made a pact with myself to tweet one line, one thing I love about the world, every day for the rest of however long I live. In that way, the poem goes on. And I’d love to write many, many lines for when I’m dead, that I can just schedule to be tweeted out.

“Sorry to get so morbid! That’s somehow comforting to me though.”

Alex Dimitrov said the idea of writing about love came to him when he was giving a reading in 2017 and someone in the audience asked why poets write so often about death and despair.

He said: “I’ve been asked this before but I took it very seriously this time, given the state of the world. It occurred to me that the artist has a responsibility to elevate the public spirit, even as they reflect the brutality of the everyday. At least, I myself feel that responsibility.

“So much of the creative work I’ve seen in this Trump era, I don’t even want to call it the Trump era, seems to articulate a kind of anger that many times feels like screaming at a reader. There are so many things to pay attention to.

“There’s the news, there’s Twitter, there’s the news on Twitter, there’s everything else about our complicated lives.

“I did not want to scream at a reader. I wanted to make them feel glad to be alive no matter what.”

Alex Dimitrov said that the LGBT+ community knows more than most about surviving through love.

He said: “Queer people know how to survive trauma and disaster via love in very special ways – non-normative friendships, non-normative families (I mean culturally non-normative, they certainly are not non-normative to me).

“I am thinking of course of the AIDS crisis and all the things it taught us. Love for the world is the only way you survive. Otherwise, why hang on when there are so many things in the culture trying to kill you?

“Like I say in the poem, quoting Tennessee Williams, life is important. There’s nothing else to hold onto.”

The gay poet said he wants the poem to give readers (or followers) hope.

“I hope this poem reminds people that nothing has to be the way it is,” he said.

“That things are always moving and changing. The poem uses the months of the year as its structure, and in turn the seasons, and time as a whole.

“Time is a river. That river is always in motion. And motion is hope.”

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