Conquering the Fear of Poetry

As someone who has loved to write from the minute I could hold a pencil, I've never been too picky about the writing form. I enjoy writing novels and short fiction and screenplays; it's fun to write articles and I never minded writing essays in school. But there was one type of writing I always avoided: poetry. Just the mere mention of it would cause me to close my notebook. I didn't prefer to read it, and I didn't appreciate it either - I thought it was silly to spend time agonizing over words that resulted in such short pieces of material.

Occasionally teachers would assign a poem for homework, claiming it was a "fun" assignment as well as a good learning experience. I don't recall any of the poems I came up with, only that I probably wrote what I considered a cliché poem - after all, didn't they have to mention roses or the change of seasons?

Recently, my opinion of poetry has changed. A friend of mine, who is the lead singer in an indie band, expressed how she loves to write melodies but dislikes writing lyrics. Despite my love of writing, I empathized... aren't lyrics a form of poetry? This led to her challenging me to write a poem in five minutes.

There are two things to know here: one, I love a challenge. I'm most competitive with myself so I had to prove that I could rise to the occasion. Two, I prefer to work under deadlines - the quicker, the better, as deadlines give no time to worry or ponder. The best way to write is simply to write.

So I wrote a poem, and then, within the timeframe, I wrote another. To my surprise, I liked writing them, and to my friend's surprise, she liked the results. Why the difference? I think it's because I stopped stressing that "this is poetry" and wrote what I wanted. I was more focused on our discussion about lyrics than remembering my history (or non-history) of writing poems.