National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month:

Inaugurated by the Academy of American Poets in 1996, National Poetry Month is now held every April, when schools, publishers, libraries, booksellers, and poets throughout the United States band together to celebrate poetry and its vital place in American culture. Thousands of organizations participate through readings, festivals, book displays, workshops, and other events.

I started writing in poetry form. I was in 9th grade, and I wrote my first poem in January of 1985 (yep, I’m that old!). Words just called to me and one day I just sat down and wrote it. I won’t share it here because it’s in Portuguese. I wrote compulsively all through high school, mostly in free verse, but I also experimented with rhyme, and even have a few sonnets. I mostly wrote for myself, and sometimes I shared the poems with friends. In the summer of 1989, I had a rare flash of courage and sent a poem in prose form to a Portuguese weekly indie newspaper dedicated to the arts and music, and they published it on September 12. You can’t look it up online, but here’s the website for Blitz. I entered it with a pseudonym but my friends knew I had sent it, and it was awesome to see it in print.

I wrote my first poem in English when I was at university (Portuguese/English major). I called it “Indian Summer” and it was about the colors of Autumn.

indian summer web

(I made this photo collage in 2009 with a photo I took at Speirs Farm.)

I went on to write more poems, both in English and Portuguese, but then had a long hiatus from writing until I started writing Josh and Sofia’s story in November of 2012. Poetry will always have a special meaning for me, and often times I find myself playing with words and alliteration in a sentence or paragraph that is more emotional.

And I can’t write about poetry without a nod to my favorite modern poet, Tyler Knott Gregson. There’s not much I can say that would do justice to his poetry, other than I love his use of words. His first book is coming out later this year, and I’m really looking forward to it.

In honor of poetry month, my challenge for you is to reread a favorite poem, find a new poet, or get a piece of paper and write your first poem.

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