This is a free version of Beauty Hunter. If you’d like to join a community that explores beauty and the playful nature of life, and support my work, upgrade to a paid subscription. Includes monthly pop-up salons, and weekly prompts. We’d love to have you!
Dear Poetry-in-Motion Friend,
For National Poetry Month, I invite you to consider and celebrate your inner poet. “WHAT?”, you might contest, “I’m not even creative let alone a poet,” SNORT SNORT.
OK, OK. For shits & giggles, let’s put the nays aside and go with this definition of “poet”:
POET, def: a person possessing special powers of imagination or expression.
Why yes you do! You have special powers of imagination. Remember that night you stayed up for hours in bed, staring at the wall, imagining the end of the world, or seeing the plot of a new book unfurl; maybe you were fretting over your wild feral horrible children, or figuring out exactly how to pace yourself for a 12-hour swim?
That’s your IMAGINATION and the power of thought, for better or worse.☝🏼
And then waking up, shaking off the thought-made movies and going out into the world and being your bold, brilliant, fallible self?
That’s you expressing yourself, maybe not in rhyming couplets but in the way you make that joke in a boring Zoom meeting, or crack your knuckles to the rhythm of your partner spooning cereal into his mouth.☝🏼
This is your poet. Our imagination and power of expression is our super power.
This April, let’s say THANK YOU to the working/writing poets for showing us the way, reminding us what we’re made of.
And you reading this: put aside a couple minutes, get comfy, hit play on the video, and I will read you a poem entitled, “Dear Selection Committee” by Melissa Studdard, a person you will want to have coffee with for hours straight (at least I did).
And remember: When you are applying for, submitting, requesting, hoping to—all types of “pick me pick me!” activities, remember that you are choosing too. As in, you are in this dance, there is reciprocity happening, even if it doesn’t feel like it.
From my inner poet to your inner poet, I love you!
Learn more about Melissa Studdard and her work.
In MS. Magazine online:
Ms. Muse: Melissa Studdard on the Power of Poetry to Create the World We Want
Share this post