As an avid reader, I eventually got into writing pretty early and life and joined in several school publications. This was a great venue for pushing yourself to write more and learn more about different literary forms. So we'd meet as a group once a week and everyone would have to write in a particular form. One day it would be short stories and the next week it would be limericks.
Poetry as a form of self-expression never came easy to me. Haikus and limericks are actually fun because they have rules to follow as related to syllable counts and rhyming sets. But free verse poetry and all that fun stuff? Not that easy to get my head into the mindset for it.
Don't get me wrong - I do enjoy reading poetry. I love Walt Whitman and e.e. cummings speaks to me on a special level. But choosing to write poetry as a way to express myself? That is oddly difficult to even imagine. And despite years of writing, I have never been able to channel my feelings into poetry.
I can certainly use words to cope with periods of strong emotional upheaval. But instead I blog and stick to more expository forms of writing. I'm trying to shift things to sound a bit more conversational as that seems to be the style of many of the biographies that I've been reading/listening to via Audible. But then again, it's not like I plan on making a career out of writing memoirs about myself since my life is still my life and I'm not as public as you may think I am.
I bring this up since more than one of these biographies have mentioned how the person would end up writing some really bad poetry during darker periods of their life. And I know more than a few people who continue to use poetry as a form of expression and they share their works online. I don't have that sort of a library and I just have these blog posts for the most part and not much else.
I suppose it doesn't really matter since it's not like everyone is "required" to use poetry as an emotional outlet. As long as my writing helps me get through the trickier parts of life, then I should be okay, right? Some people write poetry. I write these blog posts. Other peoples play video games or they jerk off more than average. Bottom line: find your output. We all need ways to cope with stress and perhaps even emotional trauma provided said methodology is not self-destructive.
Whatever floats your boat, and all that jazz.
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