Why I Was Scared Away From Writing Poetry When I Was Young

I thought that one of the things that scared me away from poetry when I was younger, like most people, was all the rules to writing poetry. But I discovered something this past week that has me looking at it differently.

I recently ordered and received a book in the mail, The New Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics. I ordered this book because I love, LOVE, exploring Shadow Poetry and the different types of traditional and invented poetry types that they have listed with all of their simple (mostly) instructions and sample poetry that makes it fairly easy to follow and figure out how to write them.

I ordered this book because I didn't want to have to be online when I am writing my poetry. Unfortunately Shadow Poetry hasn't turned their information into a book. Oh how I wish they would because the book I ordered, The New Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, does what I realize now turned me off of poetry in the first place; they use old poetry with old words and language that isn't relevant for this time.

At least not for me.

I hadn't even realized before the moment I looked through that book that was the reason I love, LOVE, Shadow Poetry's website so much!

Now I am sure that some like the old world language, how they spoke and wrote poetry back then, (they may even think it is beautiful) but for some of us it just sounds like a bunch of gobbely gook that makes me, and probably some of you, shut the book!

It was last OctPoWriMo that I discovered this helpful resource (Shadow Poetry) and I have played with it a lot while writing my poetry over the last year. One of my favorites that I recently wrote is an Acrostic poetry form. I had great fun playing with this form and I added a challenge for my readers, Lipstick - Acrostic Poetry and a Prompt. Check it out and maybe you will try it yourself!

If you are like me and need samples with modern language, I highly recommend you check out Shadow Poetry's website and all of the deliciously wonderful types of poetry forms including their invented forms. It is a lot of fun for me to peruse through them and choose one to play with and I hope you have a lot of fun with it too!

~Morgan Dragonwillow