The Shut Up & Write! 10-Day Poetry challenge ended yesterday and I am happy to say that I completed every single one!
What I learned
1.) Rhyming is hard- I spent three hours trying to find words that rhymed with “diaper” (don’t ask) before deciding it was easier to just scrap the whole poem and start over.
2.) Iambic Pentameter- I think I had an assignment in my high school English class about this but I don’t remember it taking so much brain power to figure it out back then. Long story short. It’s fun to read but not so much to write.
3.) Poetry is diverse- Most people know about Sonnets, free verse, and haikus but there are so many other forms of poetry out there. This challenge exposed me to quite a few I wasn’t aware of.
4.) It doesn’t have to make sense- Okay so this one might not be entirely true. It’s definitely better if things make sense to the reader but poetry like any other form of expression is interpretive. You could write a literal poem about ice cream and someone will see a metaphor for escapism or childhood joy.
5.) While this challenge was fun and enlightening I will probably keep any future poetry to myself.
Thank you for following along with my flailing attempts at poetry.
