Ever since I read the Dork Diaries back in middle school, I’ve wanted to write my own stories, create my own characters, and build my own worlds. The only problem was that I would never actually finish any of the projects I came up with. To this day, I still haven’t finished a novel, but something happened last fall that changed my perspective on this.
I enrolled in a course, a creative writing class that, to my surprise, was about poetry. Every student that enrolled was also a bit shocked when the professor explained the course.Â
I’ve always seen poetry as a piece of writing that rhymes and is hard to understand because there’s a meaning behind every word. And for me that used to be a bad thing. Until I started feeling too much.
Taking the pressure off the rules and the rhyming and even the assigned prompts that were optional for class, I allowed myself to experiment with my writing. I no longer created characters that were supposed to be liked by the reader, because that character was me, and it was going through what I was dealing with at the time. Experimenting allowed me to revisit and actually acknowledge past feelings that I thought I was over with, but in reality were just buried deep inside me.Â
There’s just something about feeling too much and wanting to write it down to get it away from your heart and soul.
Every time I would read at the front of the class, it was as if a part of myself was taking my armor off, letting a mask fall. And little by little it didn’t feel as scary because at the end of the day everyone in that class was going through something, and writing also became their way to cope.
If it weren’t for poetry, a lot of my feelings wouldn’t have been explained to me in a way that only I could make sense of. If it weren’t for writing these pieces I wouldn’t have felt the confidence to read and talk about my feelings with others.Â
I don’t always rhyme, I don’t always make sense, but I’ve learned that, as long as it’s transferred to the paper, nothing else matters to me.
Months later, whenever I’m not writing, I crave it. When I see something outside like the sunset or a group of friends talking, or even when I remember a past memory, a spark of inspiration ignites in me and most of the time it comes out in the form of poetry.
Poetry doesn’t have to be intimidating, you don’t even have to read the popular ones to try it. It’s just you, the paper, and what you need to say, nothing else.Â
Lots of love,