Poetry to me, is something important as it is part of my life and a way to express my ideas, feelings to people. It helped me during a rough time and I continued to write as I continue to evolve as a poet and an individual person.
I first started writing Poetry during middle school, I had done an assignment where the class had to interpret the meaning of a poem by Robert Frost titled "The road not taken". When I read the poem it made me think about what it was about and I really enjoyed reading the material. This led me to read more poems but from different people online. Eventually, I came across to Edgar Allen Poe who's poems I read and enjoyed. I became inspired by his poetry of short stories and theme's of death and along with Emily Dickinson, that I wanted to write poetry like them, show people what I feel and think. I started to use their styles as a blueprint to develop my own style and add my own personal emotions.
When I started writing my first few poems they all had the theme of sadness, despair and anger. The reason they did is because I was dealing with bullying and personal family issues that left me feeling sad and angry. This led me to having such pent up anger and sadness that I couldn't talk to anybody or my parents because I felt that they wouldn't really understand me, they would've probably brushed me off and think that I was just talking nonsense or that I didn't understand what I was feeling. So, I turned to writing poetry for the first time and the themes were of sadness, despair and anger. Initially, the poems were short and not well thought out but soon I would start channeling all the anger that was inside to make poems, I would think of what I was angry about and use it to fuel and make a scenario or a short story. I constantly used imagery in my poems because I wanted to paint a picture with my words and make the reader feel what I felt at the time. This paid off because I started to feel much better and started to find joy in my life again and my poems reflected that as they shifted from horror to a more hopeful, wanting to inspire people. I continued to write poetry because I want to look back one day, in the future, to see how I progressed and and grown as a poet.
Poetry helped me free my emotions and became an integral part of my life, a hobby that I enjoy the most and will continue in my life. It has now become like a book of my growth, as it starts from middle school, high school and now college. Collecting all my thoughts, ideas and randomness of my life.
