April is National Poetry Month. I knoww! Calm down everyone. I’m laughing – picturing some of you yawning at this dazzling announcement that’s probably going to turn your weekend plans upside down, right? That’s OK. I get it.
However, this poetry nerd has been writing poems and silly rhyming verses since I was a child. In 2001 I wrote my first poem that I was either foolish or brave enough to share with others. And I haven’t stopped since.
Poems have been the precursor and breathing moments in between writing the book.
The words that wrote my memoir have been inside me for years and years just scratching to get out. And when they did they took with them an intrinsic part of me – a feeling or thought they had attached themselves to, like a child who won’t leave the house without their most treasured object.
And whether it was love or loss, joy or tragedy; I learned to identify and celebrate whatever feeling needed to be heard. And in the hearing and releasing I found my truest self. My joy on paper.
We’re all undiscovered poems. And I hope, that no matter my age, I’ll continue to be the explorer of me. Evolving and growing into my greatest and truest self by repeatedly releasing new cells filled with aha and oops moments that keep me open and aware.
karen draper ~ writer 