Many, many moons ago, I considered myself a poet. I wrote poetry, kept a poetry journal, submitted my poems to poetry competitions and publications, and I even attended poetry festivals and workshops.

Somewhere along the way, about the time I started law school, I had stopped writing poetry. I have continued to read and enjoy poetry, but I stopped writing it. And that thought has made me sad because poetry has always been such an important part of my life.

Yesterday, while browsing the world wide web, I saw that tomorrow, March 21, is World Poetry Day. Then I remembered that April is National Poetry Month. This got me thinking about how I want to celebrate the importance of poetry and maybe, just maybe, reinvigorate my poetry writing.

Poetry matters.

While scholars debate on what point in history poetry began, I think poetry has existed as long as humans have spoken. Poetry is an art form but poems have also been used as instruments of teaching and learning. And as long as there has been writing, there has also been poetry.

The cuneiform script, created in Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq), is considered the first system of writing. (Writing defined as a system of graphic marks representing the units of a specific language.) Cuneiform dates back to approximately 3200 BC and the oldest known ‘poetic’ text, Hymn to the Death of Tammuz, dates back 2500 to 3000 years BC.

It only makes sense that people started writing their poems down as soon as writing was a thing.

Personally, I think Ralph Waldo Emerson said it best: “Every word was once a poem.”

Poetry communicates.

Poetry is powerful in that it brings language to life, evoking universal emotions, and sparking meaningful conversations.

The power of poetry is that in a handful of words, a poet can express the breadth of the human experience. Sorrow and joy, grief and jubilation, anger and peace, and everything in between. Poetry encapsulates feelings that we can’t describe. It allows us to relate seemingly unconnected ideas. It imparts the ineffable and inspires ideas. It provides a form of communication that can transcend barriers.

Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.
― W.H. Auden, New Year Letter

Poems can be short or epic. Poems can rhyme or not. Poems can be sung, rapped, or chanted. Poems can be nonfiction or silly or serious. Poems can have a defined form or free form.

The beauty of poetry is that there is no one way to create a poem.

Poetry is art.

And without art, well, I don’t want to think about life without art. And poetry is one art form that I’ve abandoned for far too long. So I decided to do my own poetry writing challenge in April to celebrate National Poetry Month and revive my writing.

My challenge is to write 1 poem each day in April. To aid the process, I created a list of prompts. Feel free to use the prompts too. The prompts can be used in a variety of ways from creating a poem around that day’s word to merely as an inspiration for that day’s poem. There are no real rules other than to write 1 poem a day and to have fun.

If you’re not up for trying to write poems, another challenge is to read a poem a day. Bonus if you read a poem that fits one of the daily prompts!

I’ll be posting my poems periodically throughout the month either here or on Bluesky.

Let me know if you’ll be joining in the fun!