Brooklyn, NY – The 21 line poem written by a Chasidic girl from Crown Heights that has literally taken the world by storm continues its international journey around the world as both news outlets and social media have been spreading word of the innovative poem which shows the power of a positive attitude.
It was 28 year old Ronnie Joice of London who catapulted Worst Day Ever? , written by Chanie Gorkin of Crown Heights, into the media spotlight.
Joice, who does public relations for the food and restaurant business in London, saw Gorkin’s poem tacked up on the wall at Nambucca, a live music venue and bar in northern London. Joice tweeted a photograph of the poem on the morning of July 22nd to his almost 7,000 followers and since that time, his original post has been retweeted over 2,500 times.
Since his original tweet, Joice has been interviewed by Time Magazine, The Huffington Post UK, MTV News, ABC 7 New York and numerous other media outlets.
“It’s been a while since I went viral,” Joice told VIN News.
Gorkin’s poem has been shared countless times since Joice’s tweet and, after making headlines locally in both New York and London, it has appeared in numerous media outlets worldwide including Singapore’s The Straits Times, Australia’s News.com, Yahoo News Canada, The Times of Israel, Portugal’s JournalI, Vietnam’s Nguoi Lao Dong, Indonesia’s Liputan 6, China’s NTDTV.com, Italy’s Dee Jay, Belgium’s HLN, Ireland’s The 42 and Greece’s The Times of Change, among many others.
The 17 year old Gorkin, a soon to be twelfth grader at Beth Rivkah High school in Crown Heights, is currently away in summer camp but told CBS News in a telephone interview today that she is both overwhelmed and happy by the response to her work, which was written as a school assignment.
“I don’t think there is such a thing as a worst day ever,” said Gorkin. “I wanted to show how your day is really based on how you look at things.”
The message of the poem was culled from Jewish teachings that the teen, a self-professed lover of both writing and music, tries to incorporate into her life.
“It comes from Hasidic philosophy, which I learn daily and try to take to heart, so I try my best to live what I wrote,” explained Gorkin.
Gorkin said that the poem, which has been viewed over 1.3 million times on imgur.com, which tracks the most popular images on the internet, was the result of several hours of work.
“I was scribbling, erasing, writing, trying to figure out how to make it work both ways,” said Gorkin.
Gorkin’s father, Baruch Gorkin, noted on Facebook that the poem has been translated into several languages including Portugese, Bulgarian and Chinese. Gorkin posted images of the poem translated into both Hebrew and Russian.
Five days after the poem first appeared on Joice’s Twitter feed, the family confessed to being overwhelmed by the massive amounts of media attention.
A weary Baruch Gorkin asked by VIN News to be spared any further interviews, saying simply, “By now we are all worn out, I am afraid.”
Gorkin submitted her poem to the Poetry Nation, a website that aims to promote poets and poetry throughout the world, on November 20, 2014.
“She had originally posted the poem to our site and we posted it on our front page,” said Timothy Doyle, director of marketing and logistics at Poetry Nation. “Her poem was very original. It read top to bottom and then bottom to top.”
Gorkin’s poem was submitted as an entry to the site’s twice yearly poetry contests and was one of many semi-finalists in the competition, which ended on December 31st and was published in a poetry anthology titled Beyond the Sea: Odyssey. While Gorkin was not among the 123 first, second or third place winners in the competition, her poem has almost certainly been viewed many more times than any of the prize winning entries and has generated a huge interest in Poetry Nation.
“This started around Wednesday last week and all heck broke loose,” said Doyle. “Visits to the sites have jumped to about ten times the normal level and her poem went massively viral.”
As reported by Vos Iz Neias