a manifesto

Poetry for me has taken many forms over the course of the past few months.

Poetry for me has been a source of stress, enjoyment, self-help, and release.

At first, I was focused on form. I had no idea where lines should break or how to choose the right words to fit a certain number of required syllables to make my poems interesting. As an education major that has to strictly follow formatting rules when writing lesson plans, having to fit my poems into a certain format stressed me out greatly at first.

I then realized that if I first wrote out what I wanted to say, I could then insert that into a particular form. This is when I began to have a lot more fun! My own voice began to come through in my poetry once I realized that I could write about the people and places that I knew. I didn’t have to make up something that I didn’t actually know or care about. I inserted dialogue and made my characters talk! I brought scenes from my memory to life by describing them in detail! This was all very exciting to me.

As the semester went on, I wrote many poems about my childhood. While these poems contained many beautiful images, they had no turn and no meaning. Once again, I was frustrated because I could not create a turn in my poems. What I realized was that these poems did not matter to me. All they were to me were good memories of times I spent with my family growing up. I wrote these poems as a way to remember good memories while trying to cover up bad memories of the past year.

This was my moment of insight: I couldn’t create meaning for my readers in my poems because they didn’t hold any meaning for me. I wasn’t writing about what truly mattered to me at this point in my life.

So…I began to write about everything I have been forcing myself to not write about. My past year has consisted of hard family relationships, broken friendships, and break-ups. Who wants to dwell on these types of events? I didn’t at first, but once I let myself go to that place of hurt within myself, poetry came more naturally to me. The more I wrote, the better I felt about everything that happened. Writing poems about the hurt of shattered relationships has helped me release that pain that I have been holding on to for over twelve months.

My advice to every aspiring writer: don’t be afraid to write about what you are scared to write about. Let it out! You will feel much better once you do, and you will have significantly better writing to show for it.