A couple of years ago, I challenged myself to write a poem every single day.
I have always loved poetry as a form and as a mechanism for communicating deep truths and examining difficult subjects. Poetry is a standard in my day and life—both the reading of it and the writing.
That particular year, I was afraid that I would run out of material to write those daily poems. I know, now, that when one is paying attention to one’s world, there is never a shortage of material from which to choose.
I had this calendar from Half Price Books (I’m one of those old-fashioned people who doesn’t like using technology for things like schedules. I like to have calendars and actual to-do list I take out and hold and write on.) Printed on the daily squares of this calendar was the name of a famous writer, artist, photographer, musician, or dancer—someone involved in the arts. I decided this would make the perfect process—use the person who was born on that day, look up a quote from him or her, and then write a poem that was my response to that quote.
This worked marvelously. It was such a random collection of subjects and themes that each person had spoken about, and this allowed my poems during that year to touch every part of the human experience.
Each poem was written in a composition book (I always write poetry by hand) and then transcribed onto my computer. This book contains only a fraction of the poems I wrote that year. Some others are waiting to be collected into another book (or two), and others were made to be tossed out, a good practice exercise.
No poem is wasted, even if they are tossed out.
Several of these poems are gathered into Textbook of an Ordinary Life, which releases Nov. 6.
(Photo by Mike Tinnion on Unsplash)
