If you are a seeker of fervent poetry and unforgiving summer heat and ways to turn life to art and art to life until the two are one and the same and have something a little akin to madness about them, allow me to introduce you to Dakota Warren.
From a childhood in rural Australia to finding her place in the poet-beloved London, Dakota has dedicated most of her heart and waking hours to words. She shares the literature she consumes with her admirers across various social media platforms, thus becoming a trustworthy guide for those in search of books to fall in love with. As for the literature she creates, Dakota began to compose poetry from an early age, and has grown to pour it into her blog, social media accounts, and her debut anthology “On Sun Swallowing”, which became a finalist for the Goodreads Choice Best Poetry Book of 2022. It is evident that words, hers or hers adored, are woven into Dakota’s life to the point of becoming one, solid thing. But when and how did she discover the necessity of her art to her own life?
“I grew up in a strange place for a little girl. Dry, hot, and desolate - a small town in rural Australia in the thick of the drought, surrounded by sheep and rifles and a good fear of God. All one can do in this environment is observe and imagine and play pretend. Observe the branches as they dance in the wind and imagine the stories they share through their connected roots. Observe the glowing eyes in the bushes at night and imagine who it is they are here to collect. Observe my teenage mother as she invented reasons for us to escape over and over again.
I began writing because I didn’t have anything else. I continue to write because I do not want anything else.”
A sense of necessity, however, is but the foundation of writing. To bring one’s words to bloom, one requires things one loves dearly enough to paint them over and over again with a pen. When asked about it, Dakota provides an incomplete list of her beloved things.
“Place - the harsh Australian outback, the confinements of my four bedroom walls, hotel rooms and the transitory emptiness that beckons awful things to take place inside of them, churches and chapels and all places of worship, anywhere beneath the warm sun
Painting - The Apparition by Gustave Moreau (biblical depiction turned magical fable - saw it in the flesh in Paris and sobbed!), all art depicting St John the Baptist’s head for that matter, The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch (have written an entire triptych of poetry to accompany this for a symposium in autumn! I could speak about it forever - the symbolism, the secrets, the religious terror of it all), the surrealism movement in itself, the boundaries pushed and blurred by conceptual artists like Marina Abramovic, and oh I must stop here for I fear I will go on forever
Scent - Old books (and I mean stagnant and musty and melting at the seams), citrus peel, summer fruits, eucalyptus, the countryside air, the incense swung from the thurible during Sunday mass, the metallic twang of blood as it hits the pavement
Memory - a childhood forged beneath the angry Australian sun, climbing trees and falling out of them, hitting the dry earth below me with a thud, dancing about with the baby lambs, teasing the foxes as they linger amidst the bushes, and a jump to adulthood where I have run away from it all and scream my poems towards the stars and spend each summer beneath the Sicilian sun with people in whom I found God.”
Alongside the usual titles of writer and poetess, Dakota is often recognised across her frequented platforms as Lady Dakota - a reference to her online persona - and Nowhere Girl - a name under which she had been sharing her poetry on her blog for years. Yet, one glance at her social media presence reveals an existence extending far beyond a seat at a desk with an open notebook. From the search for insight into Dakota’s own perception of herself stems the question: What are you, in the hours during which you are not a writer? How much of yourself do you carry into your work, and how much do you leave behind on the coat rack?
“Internet oracle, London-bound angel, urban fox, runaway daughter, big sister, humanoid, girl thing, part-time lover, full-time friend, creator and curator of beautiful and terrible things. Most importantly, I am Dakota Warren, and I am all of these things today and also none of them tomorrow. I am whatever those who read my words want me to be because when you are an artist it is not up to you to decide. There is something thrilling in this. There is something magical in this - collaboration, a mess of ideas turned to art. There is also something awful in this and I grapple with this in my own ways.”
Dakota takes care to reflect this in the bits of her daily life shared with her followers. Lying in sun-licked grass and dancing and dining at uncertain hours of the night; kisses traded for secrets and blood-red oranges; scraped knees and half-read novels lying face-down on lace tablecloths. An image of self beautiful in its apparent effortlessness, and yet, the pieces composing it are delicately never out of step. An intense display of one’s persona such as this, an ardent following of not only one’s passions but their aesthetic appearance as well, calls for questions of how authentic such a display can be. As per a comment of a follower, “everything feels so crafted and calculated with you… always perfectly posed, in your curated aesthetic… reading the perfect book”. After all, social media is known for its artificial nature, where each piece of information is carefully curated and polished into a reflection of what we wish to be perceived as, which does not necessarily bear the connection to who and what we truly are. But Dakota ushers such concerns away.
“I am always myself on the internet. I am ever-evolving and growing and learning. A persona is a curious thing which emerges at the hands of an audience.”
Syrupy and intoxicating, charming and unsettling, Dakota’s words delve into themes which linger in the corners of all our minds, yet which we ourselves often fear to approach for their intensity. She turns the lovely into obsessive and the ugly into human and stains it all with cherries and red wine. If you are in need of encouragement to be a little bolder, to dance and play through your days instead of cautiously watching them pass, I wholeheartedly suggest for you to read her creations.
