Poetry

2016

  • July 30, 2016 – I participate in a creative writing workshop where I write flash fiction for the first time. The woman putting on the workshop says she’d planned for us to also write flash poetry, but we run out of time.
  • December 22, 2016 – I somehow get started reading micropoetry on Twitter.

In the fifteen minutes that follow, I discover the #TLPoetry prompts and write my first piece of micropoetry on Twitter. It’s fun and I enjoy the low barrier to entry!

I continue to use @TLPoetry’s biweekly prompts to write poems every now and then.

2017

  • January 2017 – A friend mentions she’s trying to read a poem each day.
  • February 23, 2017 – While travel sketching in Bologna, I happen to meet a street poet.
  • February 25, 2017 – I see a different man selling poems of the day (in Italian) in the middle of a street and I buy one.
  • April 18, 2017 – I read Rupi Kaur’s “Milk and Honey” on my Kindle in Madrid.
  • May 24, 2017 – After poetry has been in the back of my mind for months and months, I ask friends on Twitter for poetry recommendations.

It results in this list:

I put holds at the library.

  • June 14, 2017 – I finish reading Sylvia Plath’s “Ariel: The Restored Edition.”
  • June 15, 2017 – I finish reading Mary Oliver’s poetry collection “Dog Songs.”
  • June 17, 2017 – I finish reading Mary Oliver’s poetry collection “Felicity.”
  • July 12, 2017 – I finish reading Mary Oliver’s poetry collection “Blue Horses.”
  • July 14, 2017 – I finish reading Mary Oliver’s “A Poetry Handbook.”
  • August 2017 – The idea flashes into my mind that I’d like to write and self-publish a collection of poetry in the coming year.
  • October/November 2017 – I make a friend in Flagstaff who writes poetry. While working on hitch together we play games of writing haikus or coming up with metaphors. I’ve written two poems in my spare time this month. I checked out “100 Essential Modern Poems” from the local library and we analyze a few poems together every couple of weeks.

2018

  • January 2018 – On my list of “18 in 2018,” I write that I want to publish a collection of poetry this year.
  • March 2018 – I read Mary Oliver’s “Blue Iris: Poems and Essays” and “Evidence: Poems.”
  • April 2018 – I read “Citizen: An American Lyric” by Claudia Rankine and “The Sun and Her Flowers” by Rupi Kaur.
  • June/July 2018 – During RMYC I worked on filling a small notebook with poem ideas / phrases / etc. In July I wrote a notecard poem-esque thing when my good friend Nate shaved his beard and I felt like he was a stranger. A lot of feelings to capture there!
  • August 2018 – I read David Richo’s “Being True to Life: Poetic Paths to Personal Growth” and was really inspired by his ideas and exercises.
  • Oct./Nov. 2018 – On the road trip and during fall season I acquired my own copy of Mary Oliver’s “New and Selected Poems,” as well as two of Roger Housten’s “Ten poems to…” collections.
  • December 2018 – I didn’t publish any sort of poetry collection this year, didn’t even write a complete poem! But the curiosity and drive is still there, so I’m lowering the bar in 2019 to the aim of writing micro-poetry more frequently, and perhaps making a tiny zine of micropoems as a first “collection.” (When I deleted my twitter accounts earlier in the month, I noticed that there was usable stuff in my past micropoems, which were done on Tuesdays and Thursdays to prompts. I can start that up again on my own accord, if only to write poetry regularly and without pressure!)