Dear, guys – welcome back to Letters From Liz!
So, about a little over a year ago, I remember publishing a post on the reason why I don’t write poetry anymore. TLDR, it basically was because poetry reminded me about some dark parts of my past and the person that I was when I was writing poetry. In a way, the craft was tainted for me; I have some of my closest friends at the time tell me that I should stop writing because it wasn’t good and for a while, I listened to them. I haven’t written a single piece of poetry since 2013.
That was, until recently.
You see, poetry was a quick and artistic way of me to express how I was feeling and what was going through my mind. It was more like mental check-ins than poetry, which was just my style of poetry, but the people around me made me try even harder to seem “dope” or “cool”, hence the try-hard poetry started. Don’t get me wrong, some of those pieces are still my favorite pieces I’ve ever written, but I never wanted my writing, especially my word-vomit of poetry, to be taken so…seriously? Well, I guess so try-hard like.
I stopped writing because I was just scared of starting again. I felt like I lost my passion for poetry after a while, and it was hard for me to just finish a piece every now and then. I don’t know why or how I got back into writing “poetry”; maybe it was just another outlet to express the things that were happening to me, but I started to just do a “iPhone note poem” every night and sharing them on my social media and the rest is history.
In a way, writing these little poems became therapeutic on the days that I just had a lot to say but no one to say it to. Many of these poems are inspired by therapy sessions, the ones that require me to dig up old shit and think about it in order to heal from it. I’m glad that they do because every time I write something regarding a heavy topic on my mind it helps me put those feelings into words and let it out of my system. Of course, when I first started writing them, it was very hard for me to accept the fact that they weren’t so poetic as my poetry once was. These little note poems are simply just thoughts on a paper (well, phone screen); in other words, it was a very low-stakes type of writing. It meant that I wouldn’t judge myself too hard on how “good” the poem was and that the fact that I was writing again was the only thing that mattered.
So, rekindle an old passion you once had. Stop believing that your art is not good enough, it’s the fact that you’re even doing it in the first place is all that matters! We gotta stop being so hard on ourselves, especially when it comes to our craft! It’s taking me a lot of work to embrace just doing it; no judgment, no comparison, nothing that influences your want to just do it.
So, yeah. I stopped writing poetry because I thought I wasn’t a good enough writer. Now I write it because it allows my thoughts to have a voice for once.
And that’s how Liz got her groove back (in poetry).
Letters From Liz. 