So You Want To Be a Poet? I remember dressing up and whistling Don William’s ‘Jamaica’ while getting dressed up for a poetry get-together organized by FOS, Owerri chapter. I was feeling both anxious and intimidated at the same time, owing to the fact that I will be meeting poets I admire from a distance, for the first time. My roommate, a friend who had no interest in poetry, asked me why I wanted to be a poet. “You know how hard it is to make money as a poet?” he added. It felt like a betrayal. A dispiriting stab. “I don’t care about making money,” I told him. “I just want to write awesome poetry.” Despite my show of idealism and optimism, I was wounded inside. A feeling of inadequacy crept in and I began to question my interest in poetry writing. As soon as I wrote my first collection of poems titled ‘Diary of a Broken Poet’, I believed I would be an instant success. Of course, that’s not exactly how it happened. Sadly, my first book was a colossal failure. Not one sale was made.