Poetry

So today I was talking with Lee about how he wants to know how to work on his writing skills. I told him that it's all about just writing, even if you have a block. I told him that I have started writing this blog again as a way to write, even though I've been blocked for a long time. It got me thinking that some of you may not know that I was a poet. So, I will now practice writing while giving a little bit of my background.

Just before I entered Jr. High I spent a few weeks in the summer with my grandparents. I found a book of poetry and enjoyed reading it. It was simple poetry, easy for all to read and enjoy. Like most of us, I had thought poetry was boring and hard to understand, but these poems made sense. I thought to myself, "I can write like this." So for the rest of the summer, I practiced making simple rhymes. Most of the time they were silly and a little childish; but hey, I was just barely 12.

Over the next 2 years, I made up silly rhymes, but didn't really save any of them. I remember showing some of them to my mom and she thought that I had some talent; I think that's what kept me trying. When I entered 8th Grade, the school yearbook put out a competition for students to write a paragraph about the science classes and teachers. I decided to enter a silly poem. I didn't really think that I would win, so I was quite surprised when I did! My first published poem was in the San Rafael Jr. High 1989 Yearbook!

The next year I started learning a lot more about poetry and working more on my own. One day I wrote a great poem called "The Seasons Change". If I recall correctly, during the spring or summer of 1990 I found a poetry contest advertised in a magazine. My mom encouraged me to try to write something to submit and "The Seasons Change" was what I came up with. It was still pretty simple, but I had decided that I liked doing simple. I remembered how I felt when I read that book of poetry that was simple enough for me to read and understand when I was 12.

Once again, I didn't expect to win anything, so I was quite surprised when I got a certificate in the mail saying I had won an Honorable Mention! Not only that, but not long after, I received a packet in the mail saying that I had won what they called a "Golden Poet" award and that I was invited to a convention in Las Vegas to accept my award!

I won't go into my trip to Vegas right now. I'll leave that for another time. Needless to say, it really got things going for me. In school, I worked hard to learn new writing tips and techniques, and entered a few more contests. (I won another Honorable Mention and Golden Poet award for poetry, and placed in a school essay contest.) In the meantime, I wrote a lot of bad poetry.

Don't get me wrong, some of it was good. However, I was a teenager, going through normal teenager emotions, and my poems tended to reflect that. There were a lot of really sappy love poems about different guys that I liked. Still, it was writing, and it was practice. I'm kind of glad now that I didn't keep all of those poems.

As I became an adult, life intruded upon my poetry. In some ways it made it better; however, it also interfered with my writing. I started having more and more mental blocks, and more and more time went between poems. I'm sure that stress has had a lot to do with my blocks. It's so much harder to think clearly when life has you stressed out.

In college, I took a poetry class in the hopes that I could release some of that block. I did manage to come up with some decent poems for the class; but assigned poetry just didn't have the same meaning to me as what I had done before. Basically, it didn't really work to get rid of the block.

Over the years since then, I've written some very good poems. However, I can count them on my one hand.  It has been about 15 years since I've been able to write poetry regularly. Every so often, I really miss writing; now is one of those times.

I think that I'll look up some of my old poetry and post it one of these days. Hopefully it will help to inspire me.