Meet Poet Naomi Gilmore
NAOMI GILMORE is a poet and hoop dancer based in Dallas, Texas. Find her on Instagram at @_naoetry_ and @soul_halp_flips!
CATHOLIC ARTIST CONNECTION: Do you call yourself a Catholic artist? What do you see as your personal mission as a Catholic working in the arts?
NAOMI GILMORE: I would definitely call myself a Catholic artist! For two reasons: I’m Catholic and I’m an artist! My faith is first and foremost in my life, it touches everything else, so that includes my art. Even though I don’t always make it completely clear that I’m incorporating my faith into my work because I want to reach anyone and everyone, it is there. My mission as a Catholic artist is to bring more light into the world of anyone who finds it. The world can be dark at times and I want to be that lamp on a stand.
How can the artistic world be more welcoming to artists of faith?
All artists find a way to highlight the beauty of life and the world. Knowing this, the artistic world could open its arms to artists of faith. Allowing artists of faith to have input in artistic spaces would allow for more variety of such expressions. Our faith gives us a different perspective that I believe can still be appreciated by those who do not believe!
What is your daily spiritual practice?
The main way that I spend time with God is just through normal conversational style of talk throughout the day. I try to treat Him as if He is a friend there with me (as He is). So if something frustrates me, I’ll let Him know and ask for help with the situation. If something awesome happens, I’ll thank Him right then and there. I also say a night prayer as I lay down to sleep. My son is about two months old and is still sleeping on / by me in bed, so I’ll lay down and thank God for him and for the day we had together and ask for blessings and graces in raising him and for him as he grows and develops. I sometimes use the Hallow app to do meditative prayer, usually while I’m nursing my son at some point throughout the day.
What is your daily artistic practice?
I haven’t been doing too well with this since the end of my pregnancy, but I’ve been picking it up a little bit more. I had made it a point to treat poetry as my “job” earlier this year. That meant Monday through Friday writing at least 3 poems a day, posting to instagram every other day, and learning more about poetry / poets. As I’ve stated getting the hang of this while awesome motherhood thing, I’m trying to write more again. My goal is to get to writing at least one poem a day. Once I have that down, I’ll ramp it back up again.
When it comes to my hoop dancing, these days I tend to randomly pick up my hoop and play around with it for a few minutes. Soon I hope to go on walks with my son and stop to hoop outside where there’s more space to dance and explore more with my hoop.
I definitely recommend the idea if treating your craft as a job. This is especially the case if you have big goals for it. For instance, one of my goals with my poetry is to publish a book of my poems. That’s why I have more discipline with that versus my hooping. I’ve learned that when I treat it as a job, I give it the weight it deserves. I put more into it and I learn so much more. It also helps me to tap into inspiration I may not have realized was there because I was waiting for it to become blatantly apparent to me.
Describe a recent day in which you were most completely living out your vocation as an artist.
As I mentioned above, earlier this year I was writing 3 poems a day and spending time to learn about poetry and what not. There was a day when I took it upon myself to learn how to write limericks because I never had before. I wrote my first limerick and posted a video of me reciting it to my instagram story. A few people responded to it very positively because it brought them some giggles or smiles. That filled my heart because that’s the kind of thing I want my art to do. I want it to add a touch of joy to people’s lives. A poem that didn’t really even have meaning to it was able to do that!
