for the one i'm thinking of tonight:
may your curious, wandering, brilliant spirit rest in peace.
Saturday 18 October 2014
Sunday 12 October 2014
a summary of this girl + this moment
butterflies. polynomials. the question that only you dared to ask. midnight lifechats. 1AM driving. whiteboard memories. thankfulness. Your Love. happiness. sisters (mine and yours). pumpkin pie. heartbeats. ashes for beauty. differential equations. maybes. music. apple cider. perfect autumn afternoons spent in playful conversation. don't tell me that it's never crossed your mind. the hard choices that brought me here. hazel eyes. bigger than life friendships. new friends. Sunday mornings. fleeting smiles. warm coffee cups. cinnamon sparks. Galois. safety. snuggly scarves. cats. risks. fall(ing).
Saturday 4 October 2014
The Accidental Poet
I've loved words for as long as I can remember.
However, seven-year-old me (and eleven- and fifteen-year-old me) hated poetry.
Poets were other people. Poets were beret-wearing, coffee-drinking, guitar-playing mad hatters who wandered around reciting in rhyme and iambic pentameter. (English classes did not help this stereotype.) Poets were strange people with stranger ideas who typed exclusively in lowercase. I definitely didn't want to be a poet.
You might have deduced by now that I didn't fall in love with poetry by choice.
In my senior year of high school, I took a Writer's Craft course in which we were forced to write poetry, and was surprised to find that maybe I didn't hate it (with the exception of the ballad. I still can't write those to save my life). So I found myself doing more of it—for marks initially, but eventually just for the joy of capturing everyday beauty (and pain). And slowly but surely, I found that I, too, became a writer of poems. No, not a poet. Just someone who wrote poems.
But tonight while writing my not-love-poem (it's a work in progress. The working title is "This is Not a Love Poem"), I realized that I am so in love with the art form, and it dawned on me that perhaps I have possibly, unwittingly become an accidental poet.
I've never thought of myself as a poet until tonight, but the idea no longer feels so otherly. For the first time, the name of poet feels like it could be mine.
I think I kind of love it.
However, seven-year-old me (and eleven- and fifteen-year-old me) hated poetry.
Poets were other people. Poets were beret-wearing, coffee-drinking, guitar-playing mad hatters who wandered around reciting in rhyme and iambic pentameter. (English classes did not help this stereotype.) Poets were strange people with stranger ideas who typed exclusively in lowercase. I definitely didn't want to be a poet.
You might have deduced by now that I didn't fall in love with poetry by choice.
In my senior year of high school, I took a Writer's Craft course in which we were forced to write poetry, and was surprised to find that maybe I didn't hate it (with the exception of the ballad. I still can't write those to save my life). So I found myself doing more of it—for marks initially, but eventually just for the joy of capturing everyday beauty (and pain). And slowly but surely, I found that I, too, became a writer of poems. No, not a poet. Just someone who wrote poems.
But tonight while writing my not-love-poem (it's a work in progress. The working title is "This is Not a Love Poem"), I realized that I am so in love with the art form, and it dawned on me that perhaps I have possibly, unwittingly become an accidental poet.
I've never thought of myself as a poet until tonight, but the idea no longer feels so otherly. For the first time, the name of poet feels like it could be mine.
I think I kind of love it.
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