Hey y'all, I hope everyone's well. I suppose I'll just jump right into discussing my "poetic journey." I have always been kind of scared of poetry. I really enjoy the media, and have always tried to write it myself but have been afraid of my own work. I was scared that it was too angsty, or too cringey, or that whatever I had written wasn't "poemey" enough, and was instead just a paragraph of me being sad. I was so excited to take a poetic technique class! Obviously this would be a very technical class about the rules of poetry, full of concise critical analysis. At the end of the course, I'd have a guidebook of all the things that make a poem a poem, and how to write good ones! Yeah, so that didn't happen. During the course of the class, I (and I assume many of the rest of us 👀) were craving a ruleset, maybe some clearer expectation, a rubric of some kind maybe? But looking back I think that that kind of structure would have left me paralyzed and unable to write out of fear of doing it wrong even more than I already was. As a writer, I've always preferred narrative work, creating characters and telling stories that weren't my own. Funnily enough, my 2 narrative poems (the landlord poem and the siren poem) are my two least favorite of the bunch. (Then again I do partly blame that on the fact that holy crap, landlords are so evil and I dont think the best writer can make them lovable, let alone my dumbass) This class has taught me to embrace the fear of writing about my own experience. I worried that writing about sad things from my own life would be too sappy/emo/cringe, but I don't think I fell into that trap. And even if I did, who cares, writing self indulgent stuff is like the whole point of being a writer. Here's a link to all my poems below if you're interested. I'm so glad I got to have such a great class with you all :)) https://docs.google.com/document/d/19KdHBZYabgB0CbInPHs6D0W4u9nLZH0lGCeB_O3dEN8/edit?usp=drivesdk