Finding Poems Wherever They May Be

Different poets have different ways to find new poems. Some rely on their muse to drop by every now and then, and drop some words and hints that may become a poem. Others dedicate a certain amount of time every day, and struggle with putting words together to form a poem.

In the past I've tended to let my muse come and visit whenever it can, and been thankful if I can write a poem eventually. This month  though has been different. This month I signed up for the Month of Poetry, run by Queensland poet Kathryn Apel.

For the Month of Poetry, which is running for all of January 2012, Kathryn asked poets to decide whether they were prepared to sign up to submit one poem every day of January, or otherwise, sign up to submit a poem occasionally.

In a possible fit of madness, I signed up to write and submit a new poem every day. This has been an interesting exercise, I've never committed to such an intensive writing challenge before. I've always been happy when a poem happens, just flutters by for me to grab and hold. As a consequence, usually I only manage one or possibly two new poems every week.

When I signed up for this Month of Poetry, I wasn't sure if I was capable of managing it, but I hoped I was. As it turns out, I've been able to find a new poem easily most days. On some days I've even written more than one new poem. This is something I'm proud of.

It hasn't been easy, writing some of the poems, and I don't claim they're all masterpieces. One of the great things about doing this challenge though, is that once a poem is posted to the website, the other people involved can critique each poem if they wish to. I've had some extremely valuable tips and ideas for some of my poems, which I've used to edit my poem to make it better. It has been an wonderful group of people who truly want to help create fine poetry.

The other great thing about this is that it's a closed group, requiring a password to access the poems. This means, as far as I understand it, that the poems on the website would not be classified as 'published', making them eligible for submission to publishers or competitions that require unpublished poems. 

With the need to write a new poem every day, I've been finding poems all over the place, writing about my own health issues, my family life, my dogs, responses to images and my own comments written on Facebook, or blogs.

I've written haiku, sonnets, ballads and free verse. Some of the poems are posted on this website, and have received further comments. Some I consider to be practice poems, with no merit beyond keeping my fingers moving to produce lines, with little artistic merit. They were not a waste of time, they were words that needed to be written, perhaps, to make room for better words in later poems.

Anyway, the poem here is my poem for today, 20 January. It received some favourable comments on the Month of Poetry website and I like what it says, so I'm posting in my own Poetry Website. 

The story for this morning's poem goes like this - I wrote a comment on John Malone's Facebook page as I was having my coffee this morning. I liked what I'd written so much I copied the words I liked and pasted them to a blank word doc, then wrote some more words, and played with it all. I liked it enough to post it to the Month of Poetry website.

Then I left it to collect thoughts from others. I had another look at the poem and decided it would be better in two verses. I made the change, and now I'm happy enough with the poem to put it here!

Feel free to read it and leave a comment here! 

Enough time

Every moment in life

is a poem, waiting

for the poet to see it,

think on it,

be with it,

and write down the words.

Every life has enough time

for writing poetry –

you have the potential

for as many poems

as you have moments

in your life.