A Month of Poetry: The End

I've never been a talented gardener, but this summer I decided to exercise my green thumb. I bought mint and cilantro so I could make mint tea, mojitos, and homemade salsa. I've remembered to water my plants almost every day, and move them in and out of the sun to stay healthy. They continually replenish when I pick their leaves and have grown into larger pots. I've thought often of my plants in relation to my month of writing poetry since I tried to water and write daily. I can't believe four weeks have gone by already!

I don't know about you, but writing a poem a day was quite a challenge. I can't say that I have 31 new poems to share. Some days are simply crazy—filled with work, appointments, birthday parties, dinner preparation, laundry, stomachaches, headaches, and the list can certainly continue. Especially at the beginning of the month, it was hard to work through the business and slow myself enough to let metaphor speak. It was also challenging to write creatively when I had a looming list of tasks to get done by the end of a long day.

On the other hand, it's super awesome to watch my writing folder grow, my wall chart collect ideas, and to present new work to my writer's group! What I've learned is that the act of attempting a poem a day by setting aside time to write and creating a rough skeleton of a poem, produces many pages of poetry. As the month continued, those days when I simply didn't feel creative and put my pen to paper, I got somewhere I didn't expect. I had to write through the noise in my mind to get there, but metaphor did speak, maybe even more readily, because I was practicing and gaining endurance each day over the course of the month.

Now I will unleash my inner editor, and I'm excited to have so many new poems to revise! Will I do it again? Yes! Like the plants beside my front door, I want to watch my writing grow, replenish, and become a thick collection in need of a larger pot. The only way to do that, is to write!

Did you write a poem a day for the last month? What did you learn from your experience? Would you try it again?

– Jenelle