Background
I started 2020 off planning to do a poetry challenge, of sorts. I wanted to get back in touch with the emotional side of me and project what I was feeling in poetic ways. This is something I regularly did as a teenager and sort of fell out of touch with. I’ve talked about it before, so you probably already know all this. Anyway, I’m not an emotional person. So without this outlet, I get a little bottled up. Writing is the way I project things. Poetry is one of those methods.
Wellllllllll I think it’s safe to say 2020 did NOT go the way any of us planned.
Being quarantined and then generally worried about health and safety on top of political unrest is not exactly conducive to poetry, it turns out. I posted every month January-April. Then, in May, I had 1 sad little poem to share.
Then I shared ZERO poems in June and July.
But I didn’t want to forget this challenge. I didn’t want to let it slip away.
So, here’s me, crawling back into it and hoping you’ll accept the months that have been a little off.
Here’s me sharing a few things I’ve done and hoping it still speaks to someone.
Technically, I didn’t really take June “off”. I shared exactly 1 poem in June on my Instagram … this one. Again, this one seemed politically motivated (that’s going to be a little difficult NOT to be lately, I think) and important at the time. Then I sort of forgot about it. I never posted a June Poetry Challenge wrap-up because I didn’t remember posting it. Oops. Anyway, here it is.
Rhyming is not something I’m always a fan of, but this poem felt like it needed the rhymes. It wasn’t exactly easy coming up with them (or the syllable pattern I used) so this one took me a bit longer than I meant for it to. But I like it. Even if I did JUST notice I have a syllable count error in one line. UGH.
I actually thought I took July “off” of the poetry challenge. Then I remembered this little gem. It’s silly, my handwriting is bordering on illegible, but it’s technically a poem.
Who knew acrostics were still a thing? Oops, did I give away the hidden message? My bad.
Alright, this one required a tiny bit of research and then I simply HAD to write something. In 2016 the National Weather Service shared a definition for this particular word, which is derived from the Greek word for lightning or thunderbolt. Ceraunophilia is the fondness for thunder and lightning. BEAUTIFUL, right?
So, since I’m a huge fan of storms and happen to live in the desert, this poem was inspired by real-life me.
I threw in the Zeus component both as a nod to the Greek root of this term AND because, let’s be honest, Zeus is FASCINATING. (Is that last one just me?)
And YES you counted right … there’s a syllable mistake in this one too. DOUBLE UGH.
Last, but certainly not least, is the poem that went up today.
But hold on, you may be saying, it’s only the 27th. Why not wait out the last few days of August and see if you can write a few more? Well, friends, that’s a bad idea. Remember, I haven’t posted a poetry challenge wrap-up in 2 months. If I don’t do this NOW, I’m likely to forget to do it at all. So, IF I write another poem in August, I’ll include in on the September wrap-up. Deal?
Anyway, this poem. Well, it’s more of a free form than anything I’d done in awhile. Basically, I saw the prompt and felt little wisps of inspiration (mostly from the fact that I just read Speak for the first time so drawing a forest/trees completely sparked that image).
So I headed to Canva (my favorite little app) and searched the images for “FOREST”. Boom-this picture came up and inspiration just HIT.
The poem flowed right out.
With the exception of ONE word change and ONE change in line break, this is the exact way it came to me.
Imperfect? Yes. But that sort of goes with the poem too, I think.
Well, that’s it. That’s the update on how poetry has been going for the last 3 months.
I’m getting back into it. I’m not giving up. I’m still trying. That’s the best we can do, right?
Talk soon.
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