Being a journalist helps me be a better poet.

Most poets tend to go very inwards for inspiration.  That was true for Blake, Rosseti, Dickinson as early examples.  Blake wrote a piece on experience ironically.  Many other poets do seem removed from the "Real" world around them.  Virgil was in Roman culture, but was likely way more involved in his writing to give much attention to the life around him.  No doubt Walt Whitman was also such a writer.  This is perhaps the kind of thing that attracted the Academy in the first place.