Carolyn Forché, a poet who won the Lamont Poetry Award for her book The Country Between Us, about El Salvador, said, “Change your innermost obsessions to become a political writer.” That makes sense. You don’t write about politics by thinking you should. That will become doggerel. Start caring about politics, reading about it, talking about it, and don’t worry about what it will do to your writing. When it becomes an obsession, you will naturally write about it.
