diVERSES reKINDLED: In Conversation With Poet Jordan Sandidge

One of the greatest joys I have found with business, that poetry was much slower to teach me, was the ability to let everyone go.

A refrain among poets, painters, musicians, and other artists is they create for everyone. The song is for everyone. The poem, everyone. The canvas, everyone.

The thinking goes my work will reach more people if I make for everyone.

It wasn’t until I started my businesses that I realized the need to focus. I teach adults who are already advanced enough to appreciate communication demands, specifically in English, and who don’t mind a bit of theory tossed in with their practice.

That isn’t to say that kids or beginners will find my lessons useless. Quite the opposite; there is a lot they can learn. But the focus of what I create, and how I tell the world what I’ve created, does not center on those people.

I’m surrounded by messaging that understands this principle. Just tonight, putting my kid to sleep, we were reading an old Christmas catalog, full of toys that I certainly could buy, and thirty years ago, would have wanted to.

But now, the explosions behind the text announcing special deals, the word searches opposite blocky video game characters I’ve never seen before, don’t have me scrambling to add to my shopping cart.

Creation is no different.

I enjoy having conversations with Jordan because he not only understands the complexities of art and business, but navigates each and acknowledges both pitfalls and complements.

When Jordan mentions being public with the work, public speaks to audience beyond the self. Audience speaks to a specific group. Specifics speak to clarity.

If I know that my poem would resonate most with parents and not with kids, it wouldn’t make sense to make a collection for preschoolers. A bluegrass band playing during an orchestra intermission, while maybe appealing to a few ticket holders, would fit better at country music festival.

Yet to go deeper on the bluegrass group at the orchestra, there may actually be something more striking there. After all, the people that want bluegrass and orchestra together don’t have a lot of options.

As Jordan says, by diving enough into the creation side and being public with that, it may be possible to actually create enough of a following to survive, purely because of how specific the audience is.

Mauborgne and Kim coined red ocean, the overcrowded arena, and blue ocean, where competition is scarce. The more I can move to where there is no competition, mostly because I have work that is so unique, the more I can pull others to me.

Full conversation with poet Geoff Anderson and poet Jordan Sandidge: https://youtu.be/1Y4F3k_bYQ0