April is National Poetry Month. I might have written about this last year (or the year before...things are all starting to blend together) or you might have seen me on social media (if you follow me on one of those) post a poem a day.
I'll admit that the poems I'm currently posting everyday aren't necessarily my best. So, why do I post them?
 |
| April 11th 2021 |
The honest answer is as a challenge to myself. Writing and posting a poem a day forces me to actually write something everyday. Some of these poems might turn into something else entirely. I've already started taking a couple of the poems I've posted and started to expand them.
If you're interested in reading some of my better poems, I do have a poetry chapbook available for purchase (*cough shameless plug *cough *cough) by clicking this link. It's a Gothic collection - because if I'm going to write and publish poetry, it will have a horror theme.
But enough about me and my non-existent writing career.
Let's celebrate poetry.
Poetry is as fluid and adaptable as water melting off a mountain. Or maybe I should say that good poets can make a poem flow and form from a tiny spring into a mighty rivers. Bad poets just create a landslide with their words.
Like the many different paths water can take, poetry can be so many things. I've made arguments that song lyrics are a type of poetry and worth being studied in the same way that Shakespeare is. The best example of this might be Queen's famous "Bohemian Rhapsody". There are so many layers to the lyrics of that song. Then there are the poetry collections that make me question my place in the universe. I get that T.S. Eliot's book about Practical Cats inspired a trippy Broadway production, but dear universe did it take me a long time to get through this very short book. It needs to be placed on the shelf "things that exist, but are no longer relevant."
Currently, there's a big movement on Instagram, Tumblr, and other social media sites for people to post inspirational words and call it poetry... oh and there are some awesome and legit poets posting awesome poems there as well. I am one of them (I'll leave it up to you if I'm the former or the latter). I personally like the blackout poetry writers and have had a ton of fun turning my public domain books into blackout poems. My attempts at it and showing them to my friends inspired one of those friends to tell their daughter, who then had her class of students write blackout poems of their own. I wish I could share some of those poems, but they really aren't mine to share.
 |
| This is an older one of mine. |
However, there are a lot of other types of poetry to follow on social media. Some of them have their collections published on an annual or bi-annual basis like Amanda Lovelace (who's work speaks to some people, but doesn't do much for me) and Rupi Kaur (who I enjoy reading). Most recently I read light filters in poems by Caroline Kaufman who was a teenager when she published this collection. I thought it was fine, very pretty.
Now, Nikita Gill is a master poet as far as I'm concerned and recently wrote an entire novel in the form of a collection of poems called The Girl and the Goddess: Stories and Poems of Divine Wisdom. I loved it. I love pretty much all of her work. And she's also a social media poet.
So, if you want to try reading more modern poetry, but don't feel like shelling out a ton of cash up front I recommend checking out the social media poets and supporting them with likes and shares.
But poetry isn't always about inspiring phrases and bad breakups. Sometimes poetry is in response to the troubled times we are living through. Since the start of the pandemic, a lot of my poems were about the feelings of isolation, fear of COVID, and my other anxieties. As politics began to heat up and a lot of terrible things continued to happen, my writing reflected those moments in time.
Poetry can be used to help people process trauma, either by writing or reading. It can give people an insight into experiences they will (likely) never experience for themselves. Some collections I read and felt a connection to included Don't Call Us Dead by Danez Smith (which focuses a lot on being a black man in America), War Torn by Hasan Namir (which is a reflection on being a gay man growing up in Iraq - consequently the Namir liked my review of his collection and I am very flattered by this), American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassins by Terrance Hayes (which is a collection of poems written in the first year of Mr. Trump's presidency), and For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf by Ntozake Shange (which is actually a poetry collection that is meant to be seen performed on stage and one day I will see it).
Currently, I'm reading i am the rage by Dr. Martina McGowan (who is a gynecologist - that's really cool) and focuses on social and racial justice. Many of her poems are based on the events (such as George Floyd and Breonna Taylor's murders) of 2020.
These poets aren't your Emily Dickens or Walt Whitman writers. They're not traditional, rarely rhyme, but are incredibly lyrical, soulful, and tell stories.
Poetry is what you take out of it. Not all of it is going to connect with you personally. Some of your favorite poems might be song lyrics or an inspirational phrase broken up and sprinkled across a page. A few poems might give you flashbacks to High School English class and having to analyze each word into an inch of it's existence - it wasn't fun then and reading these poems now only make me want to cry more. There will be poetry that speaks to you even if you have no context for the subject other than what you see on the news.
You might not think that you can write a poem to save your life. I'm not going to tell you you're wrong. I'm going to tell you to try writing poetry anyway. You never know what flow of water turns into a mountain stream, then grows to a raging river, only to flow out to an endless sea for everyone to read.
If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope y'all like hearing from me.
Until next week.
No comments:
Post a Comment