I come from a short fiction background, and my mom is a poet, so

Lorde once declared of her path into artistry: “I come from a short fiction background, and my mom is a poet, so I’ve always read poetry; I’ve always had a lot of different influences both linguistically and musically.” In these words, she reveals the roots of her craft—the soil in which her voice was formed. It is not a voice born from one single stream, but from rivers converging, from words shaped into stories, from rhythms of verse, and from the music that gave those words wings.

The mention of her mother, a poet, is no small detail. For the poet is one who sees beyond the ordinary, who captures the infinite within a handful of syllables. To be raised in such a household is to be surrounded not only by language but by the weight of its beauty and power. Lorde grew up not merely with words as tools but as living things—sacred, dangerous, transformative. Thus her music carries the cadence of poetry, the bite of metaphor, the echo of ancient song.

Her background in short fiction also shaped her craft. For in the economy of fiction, one learns to compress whole worlds into a few paragraphs, to reveal human truth in a single moment. Short fiction, like poetry, sharpens the mind to the essence of storytelling. Each sentence must carry meaning; each image must strike the heart. Lorde, carrying both traditions in her hands, wove them into the music that would one day bring her voice to millions.

Consider, too, the story of Sappho, the ancient poet of Lesbos. Though she lived in an age before recorded song as we know it, her verses, brief and lyrical, were sung across Greece. Her fragments survive like sparks from a fire, each small yet luminous. Sappho’s blend of lyric and rhythm mirrors the same fusion Lorde speaks of: where language and music are not separate arts but twin threads of the same cloth. In this lineage, we see that Lorde is not alone—she stands in a tradition of voices who marry poetry and melody into one.

The deeper meaning of her words lies in the embrace of influence. Too often, the world prizes originality as if it is born from nothing. But Lorde reminds us that true originality comes from listening to many voices, absorbing their rhythms, and allowing them to shape us. She admits she is a vessel for both linguistic and musical forces, for stories and songs, for inherited art and personal experience. To be influenced is not to be less—it is to be more, to be greater than oneself alone.

From this reflection we learn an essential lesson: that greatness is not formed in isolation but in communion. To become an artist, a thinker, or a creator of any kind, one must drink deeply from many wells. Read widely, listen carefully, and allow both the voices of the past and the voices of the present to mingle within you. Do not scorn influence, for it is the seedbed of your own flowering.

Practically, this calls us to cultivate both breadth and depth. Read not only what you know, but what challenges you. Listen to music beyond your own taste, learn languages beyond your own tongue, dwell in traditions not your own. For every new influence becomes a strand in the tapestry of your own voice. When the time comes to create, your work will bear the richness of all you have absorbed, and it will carry the authority of one who has both inherited and transformed.

Thus, Lorde’s words stand as a reminder that art is never solitary, but born of heritage, family, and the mingling of influences. In her mom the poet, in her background of fiction, in her embrace of linguistic and musical legacies, she reveals that creativity is a lineage, a chorus, a passing of torches. May we, too, learn to gather the voices around us, and from them, forge our own.