In December of 2000, I got a book of poetry for my 6th birthday (Thanks Jen!!). Shel Silverstein’s A Light in the Attic. For the next 14 years, Shel would be the only poet I would admit to liking. Now here we are, some 17 years, several major accomplishments and road blocks later and I’m a bit of poetry fiend. Who would have guessed? In case you don’t know the ins and outs of my poetry story, here’s what happened after my 6th birthday. When I was in the 5th and 6th grade—what my school district called “Intermediate School” at the time—my Drama Club put on Poetry Jams (Yes, like a slam, but a jam, because we were twelve). Between my 6th birthday and 12th birthday I had added Jack Prelutsky to the approved poets list, so I was more than prepared for my two-a-year poetry performances. Honestly, it was more about being on stage than it was about reading poetry (Sorry Ms. Beery! But I have a hunch you knew that). After 6th grade, there were several mandated attemtps at poetry—both reading and writing—none of which went particularly well. The two that stand out in my mind however are both from my English class during my sophomore year in high school. The first one was when we were asked to write something and back in the day I felt very strongly about rhyming (sorry Mark). A classmate of mine told me that I was “too tongue and cheek” and I didn’t understand why my melodramatic poem was any worse than hers. My second truly horendous run in with poetry in high school was having to read, listen to, and analyze Seamus Heaney’s Digging. Needless to say, this wasn’t and still is not a favorite of mine. Several years after my run-in with Seamus, I was looking through spoken word poems, because I knew the occasional one would make me smile when I stumbled across Rachel Wiley’s Dry Cake Wishes and Tap Water Dreams. For the first time, I had listened to a poem and thought, said, shouted “HEY!!! Me too!!”. The next year, Rachel came to my college campus and she became the second poet I would admit to liking. Another few years would pass before the day that would start out a normal Thursday and turn into the most prominent turning point in my life. On Thursday, November 3rd 2016, I got a phone call saying that my Dad had had a heart attack and the doctors were trying to stabilize him so they could transfer him to Riverside Hospital. They never transferred him. I spent the next few months unable to stop the word vomit, telling everything I was feeling, sharing everything I knew about my dad, asking about everything and I could see the discomfort in the eyes of people I spoke to and felt even worse. It was about March before I started writing what one might consider poetry and I realized I felt the same amount of relief with none of the guilt by writing. It took another few months or so for me to admit I was writing, and another few for me to share and in July I started going to a writing group (Hi friends!). Now, I’m genuinely not sure where I would be without poetry. And I know, that sounds like a cliche, but there it is. And here I am.
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May 2018
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