Young Writers Society

the goal

four poems completed to my own satisfaction. since I successfully completed 4 poems in 2020 and then upped my goal to 5 poems in 2021 and then wrote 0 poems.

back to four it is.

the list

old threads

2021 - hope becomes us - 0
2020 - i should be sleeping but my heart is awake - 4
2019 - prolific nonsense - 2
2018 - playlist for travel - 1
2017 - cemeteries and old trees - 4
2016 - Into the Wild Blue[Africa] - 10
2015 - A Teacher Lives in There - 10
2014 - Into the Wild Blue(Africa) - 15
2013 - Into the Wild BlueAfrica - 30
2011 - I Am Professedly a Sucker for Barrel Staves - 30

selected poems

2020 - [one]
2019 - you should know
2018 - I miss the birds in winter*
2017 - gardening
2016 - untitled [work-in-progress]
2015 - Dear Sir
2014 - Hometown
2013 - Fairy Dust
2011 - Inside In

letters to my grandfather
idk I was thinking vaguely of an epistolary novel the other day even though would I ever actually do that? survey says no, at least not in any sort of way that would be honest/not fantasy/realistic/idk what I'm trying to say

but then last night in the car I was like "poem?"

will it be a poem, either? idk, might get longer than I care for my poems to be these days after years of writing long, rambling poems and finally working on and learning to value conciseness

don't wear black at my funeral
this is even more vague and stems entirely from my own dislike of wearing black at funerals even though it's traditional in my sociocultural area, that's it

miscellaneous old ideas that have never panned out

• impostor queer/fake queer

I know I have an idea about this in my poetry journal but it probably was just this exact description with no details, but basically about the impostor syndrome you can feel as a queer person who figures out your identity later in life or as a specifically bi or pan person in a "straight passing" relationship etc

anyway this one is on my mind since I unexpectedly came out to a parental unit this week via email even though there was no sense of "well you're not really queer," so idk maybe it's just because I haven't had many coming out experiences and so many fictional narratives of queerness involve coming out

• various other poem ideas that haven't panned out yet

need to flip through my poetry journal and see what else is there because I have a b u n c h of titles and ideas on otherwise blank pages

• revise some stuff?

I know I have stuff I either posted here for feedback but never revised or drafted multiple times in my poetry journal but never posted/never declared done, so I might revisit some of those as well

curses that my trip to new york city isn't until mid-may, because I feel like that'll inspire some poetry

but oh well, since that will be post-napowrimo I'm simply going through my poetry journal for unwritten poetry ideas, and here's what we've got for possible new poems

...enspoilered because whoops I have a lot more not-at-all-written poem ideas in this journal than I thought

four, me. that's all we need. just f o u r . please for the love of god use this hiatus from fiction to your advantage, yes?

1. the warblers come in May

a great flurry of them, every year:
black and white, cerulean, yellow-rumped,
prothonotary in their yellow robes
flashing their colors in forest and swampland
before the grueling flight over Lake Erie

the birders come then too, descending
on the marsh like great flocks of ducks,
their season no longer than the warblers'

the warblers move on, and so do they,
in a whirring of field guides and cameras

migrating in search of new nesting grounds

that isn't even the poem I meant to write

do you like how my brain was like "you may have one (1) poem this month"

I mean okay fine there's still a lil more than half a month to go, but

...okay I did actually write a poem today, apparently my brain got mad about the callout lol

not feeling up to typing it up right now and again not sure that it's actually any good, but maybe tomorrow

2. sometimes you need to fall apart

a tree knows when to break down
in a storm the trunk cracks
and groans and with a crash
collapses on the forest floor

do you ever feel like an oak in a storm
do you groan, is your heart brittle
can you feel yourself
..........collapsing?

the human urge to grit your teeth
and spit in the wind's eye
to clench your firsts and stand through
the storm
no matter how it weathers you

it's okay to let go
it's okay to say there are storms
you cannot survive
to crash into bed like an oak falling
..........to the forest floor

and when the storm passes you find
soft green things winding up through
the remains of your brittle heart
like a new shoot sprouting from
the stump of a fallen tree

sometimes you need to fall apart
so you can grow back

a slight bit of planning that will almost certainly go nowhere

a slight bit of planning for a different poem that will also almost certainly go nowhere, but at least I'm having ideas ig


also, that previous poem idea I think is also going to serve as inspo for the self-portrait collage/mixed media I started a month or so ago

I have the background, it's shreds of paper from journals and printouts and it features an old poem (things I'm bad at) in the upper left corner, and I think I'm going to paint it in bi flag colors

but I haven't been sure what to do with the actual self-portrait part, but I've been thinking of maybe doing it in flowers if I didn't go just like realistic with it? and if I'm calling it "girl, untamed" re: the above poem idea, it might be good to draw on nature imagery and fill it in with flowers

although then I have to figure out how to do that so it's still clear it's a self-portrait, but anyway that's a problem for future blue

POSSIBLE PROJECTS FOR THE TIME TRAVEL THING

cemeteries & old trees (2017):
could be developed more into a poem about the human urge to leave a mark which I've been considering for some time anyway

simplicity itself (2016):
probably the same general idea but,,,,,,,,idk different

how I learned to love toledo (2014):
might actually not qualify for the contest bc I'd probably reuse more than a line? but idk I've been wanting to overhaul this forever and have never successfully done so, so it'd be worth doing

poem number one (2011):
mmmm kind of a contemplative poem about knowing ourselves kinda being the best we can do when the magic of childhood fades into adulthood which is still kind of an idea I vibe with? would again probably recycle at least a couple lines but overall it would be different and possibly lean more into the knowing yourself thing which in the original just comes up at the end