Writing/reading I got into it in when I was in school before we had to take serious exams on the stuff. I experienced the beauty of concise and vivid use of language and I was hooked. I wrote poems in my late teens (and even posted em here wayy back) but then fell out of it as an adult. I want to get back to writing one day. What about ye?
I started writing poetry when I was in middle school as a coping mechanism to deal with bullying, loneliness, and my mental health problems. I was a very lonely pre-teen and teenager, and poetry was a way for me to write about my passions (at the time, Greek mythology and classic lit) and sit with my darkness in a safe and uncensored way. Sharing my poetry was both the best and worst decision I've made regarding my writing. I got a lot of praise and encouragement, which motivated me to continue, but I also started to censor myself more as I got older to try and make my art "acceptable." I write more fictional stories, essays, and blurbs about my inner world nowadays than poems, but poetry is still my first love. It was a life-saving outlet for me during a difficult and emotionally-turbulent time in my life.
Poetry became very real for me, walking across Westminster bridge and watching the sunrise one morning about 60 years ago. In the words of Wordsworth. Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still!
I nabbed a copy of the Complete works of John Keats from a Barnes & Noble in Philadelphia.The first that I opened to was Ode to a Nightingale. It made me tear up the first several times that I read it. It's that poem that opened me up to poetry.
