Every day for the past seven years, Tyler Knott Gregson has written a simple haiku about love and posted it online. Tyler’s words are honest, vulnerable, and generous. These poems, some previously unpublished, will be featured in his upcoming book, “All the Words Are Yours: Haiku on Love.” In celebration, Tyler and his publisher, Perigee Books (an imprint of Penguin Random House), are donating $1 of each pre-sale to TWLOHA. We asked Tyler to share more about why he chooses to write about love and why TWLOHA matters to him.
You can order your copy at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, and Independent Book Sellers near you. Pre-sale ends Oct. 19.
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I have been there, way down there, lower than you thought you could go, deeper into the dark places than you’d be comfortable admitting out loud. I have been there, frightened and lonely and struggling to remember the way hope felt, the way it sounded when whispered. I have worried through sleepless nights and watched them turn silently into exhausted days, and I have wondered through the hours when things would settle, calm, and when grace would return. I have been there, through it, and looking back on it now, I know things that I will carry with me the rest of my life, my hopefully long and perfectly beautiful life I will wake up to day, after day, after day.
I know now just how valuable an organization like To Write Love on Her Arms truly is, how crucial, how vital to the fabric of the world today. I know how they whisper of hope when it feels like no one else will; I know how they believe it, rock solid in their conviction, that hope is always here, burning in the background even when we cannot feel the warmth. This, precisely this, is why once again I have decided to partner up with them on the occasion of the release of my new book, “All The Words Are Yours: Haiku on Love.”
My new book, a selection of haiku from the more than 2,000 I have written daily for the last 7 years, seems to center and reflect on love when skimming the surface of each poem. In truth, and it’s something that has permeated everything I’ve written for a long time, the real centerpiece of them all was, is, and always will be something else…Hope. The kind of hope that sneaks into and saturates real love, the kind of hope that pushes you through the dark places and the low days and keeps you understanding that shared hope is part of a foundation of actual and honest love. Hope that things will be better, hope that they are better than they were, hope that the future is filled with things worth fighting for, worth braving the bad days for, and worth believing in, even when it feels like it’s been silent far too long.
I am honored to work with To Write Love on Her Arms once more, to help reach more people that have been there, way down there, lower than they thought they could go. We can all be a light into the darkest places for someone else. We can all be the whisper when all they’ve got is quiet.
Namaste,
TKG
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We are excited to announce the “All The Words Are Yours” Instagram contest with Tyler Knott. From now until Midnight EST on Friday, we want to see what moments in your life give you hope.
To enter, post an original photo on Instagram that makes you feel hopeful and write an original haiku about hope in the caption. Then, tag @twloha & @tylerknott in the post along with #TWLOHAxTKG
You may enter as many times as you would like over the course of the five-day period.
TWLOHA will randomly choose five winners to receive 1) a copy of Tyler’s new book 2) a handwritten haiku from tyler and 3) one of our new collaboration shirts.