More Fluff: Bad Poetry Project

To continue the “fluff posts” I’ve been writing for the past few months, I wanted to talk in further depth about the “bad poetry” I’ve been writing. Last time I mentioned it, I hadn’t actually started writing it yet. I’d been contemplating it, because I wanted to get back into writing poetry again without the pressure of writing perfect prose, the perfect turns of phrase, the perfect imagery. I was (and still am, to be honest) scared to write “wrong” that I wasn’t writing at all. But what is “wrong,” really? A poem is simply a feeling, imagery, an idea, put into some kind of verse (or non-verse), right? There’s really no wrong way to write it, technically. Sure, there’s rough poetry, and there’s awkward writing of beginners who need to hone their craft —like yours truly once did once upon a time—but usually it’s not “bad” per se. But calling my poetry now “bad poetry” gave me the freedom to play. I actually write at the top of every document “Bad poem” and the date. Really! Because that told me and my brain/muse that this was just pretend, I’m playing right now, it’s not a big deal, it doesn’t have to be pretty…and it set me free.

Granted, these poems aren’t great literature. They probably wouldn’t win any awards. They might be publishable with some massaging. (Which I am considering). But it’s been fun, and it’s helping me keep my hand in creativity during this time when I am not feeling it. Yep, folks, the girl who couldn’t go a day without writing has not written or revised for over a month. So there had to be something I could do. So I started writing the poems!

Side note: They are all almost exclusively love poems. Why? I don’t know. My poetry muse is a diehard romantic I guess. She’s stuck in sixteen-year-old, or maybe new adult, or maybe adult going through COVID whose mind has nowhere to go mode I guess?

To date, I’ve written maybe ten or twelve. I have a poetry Instagram now. I discovered that there’s an actual poetry community on there and I wanted to get involved. I’ve gotten some nice feedback. I’ve also been incorporating Esperanto into my poems, just as a challenge. For my most recent one, I translated the entire thing into Esperanto, but need help on some grammar stuff, so posting that might have to wait.

I was thinking about the quality of these poems versus the poems I used to write in my twenties. And there is a definite difference. And at first, I thought of them as “not as good.” But then as I pondered it, I realized that that might not be necessarily true. I mean, yes, I need to get back into the groove and relearn certain things, but I am a completely different person now. Twenty years ago when I wrote those poems, I had just graduated from college, was dating my ex-husband (and subsequently married him), wasn’t chronically ill yet, and wasn’t writing novels for the most part. My life looked completely different and I saw things through the lens of youth and naivete and promise. Now I’ve grown up, gotten divorced, remarried, gotten sick and stayed sick, wrote novels and made my dream as a published author come true…but not without sacrifice and challenges. I’m not naive anymore, nor am I twenty. I’ll always be a hopeless romantic at heart, but I now know that it doesn’t work that way at all. And health doesn’t always last. The things I wanted for myself at twenty aren’t the things I want for myself now. So the girl that wrote those poems doesn’t exist. So naturally, she’s not around to write poems anymore. But I am. And I think that’s why there’s such a different feel.

Twenty years really does make a difference.

So, not so much fluff, guys. It was intended to be fluffy, but these are dark times, and I’ve been feeling dark. My love poems have been dark, too (see above). If you want to see more, check out my poetry Instagram at @erinzpoetry. I upload poems every few days or so. Or at least while the muse is whispering stuff in my ear. Hopefully she continues to do that. It’s been fun.

Got any poems or stories to share? Instagram accounts to follow? Let me know in comments.