Once a promising poet, Óscar Restrepo, the protagonist of Colombian filmmaker Simón Mesa Soto’s 2025 film, A Poet, is now middle-aged and unemployed, spending his days wallowing in failure. Óscar is seen crying, drinking, squabbling with family members and other writers, and muddling through attempts at forging a relationship with his teenage daughter. When he starts a new teaching job, he meets and begins mentoring a student who shows prodigious poetic talent and this inspires him to write his first poem in years: “But don’t lose faith yet / In this sad poet / For he is trying to write / A happy poem.” Try composing a poem from the persona of a sad poet attempting to write a happy poem. From where does the sadness spring, and what does happiness look or sound like?
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