Mental Meanderings

Revisiting My Poetry Archives

Today I worked on some new poetry and started looking through my archives. I’ve got poetry from up to about 8 years ago archived and it’s interesting reading over some of my older works. There are a few rare nuggets amongst them but mostly I see how much my writing has developed over the years. I reflect on the poems and remember where I was in life when I wrote them. Some I’m very familiar with, like old friends. Others I barely remember.

I have found that I have multiple copies of some poems from when I’d stored them in more than one place. Others have multiple versions of one poem. Most of them aren’t dated directly. Now I’m sorting the archives into folders, referring to file creation dates and adding those to the file. The dates aren’t always accurate however as I have long handed some poems before typing them up, or created files from other files in the past. I think I should keep true dates on each of my works when I write them from now on. The dates are an important part of what makes them interesting. With dates I can reflect on what was going on in my life at that time.

There are perhaps a number of poems in there worthy of publication. There are others that might not be great yet but which I could edit and improve. There are also great deals of these poems that are simply horrible. Even today I write some bad poems. Thankfully there are less of those then there used to be. It’s wonderful to look back and see how I’m improving.

I'm cheating a little here today. The above 275 words were actually written for DWC - The Daily Writing Challenge. It's day 8 and that means 275 words required. But it's a topic I'd like to continue on with in my blog so I figured I'd copy that much and then continue to ramble on to my hearts content.

I've really enjoyed wandering around in my archives. I've barely scratched the surface of all the poems I have in there but I've looked back at various years and it's interesting to see the growth of my ability over time. Some of the poems are real nuggets. I was reading one of my Christmas collection earlier and remembering that I wasn't satisfied with it when I wrote it. But looking back reading it now and it had a wow factor I'd never noticed. Then I read the others of the collection thinking I should get this collection published but the rest of them were terrible. lol Still, I do hope to someday have a collection of Christmas poems bound together as something special for the holidays.

I've also got my Nature's Sonnets collection in the works which I grow quite frequently thanks to the fact that I really love writing sonnets and nature is one of my favorite subjects. I love to crystalize a moment or object in nature and pull a sharp visual around that concept. It's like creating water on the page or causing a flower to bloom and capturing a rainbow for eternity. When I have a reasonable number of lovely sonnets I'll get them published. Most of the sonnets will have made an appearance in my port at one time or another but they never stay there. In fact there is at least one in my port at the moment that will make it into the collection. So check out my Sonnets folder for a sneak peak of what might be in the book.

I've noticed that I've also experimented with more forms then I'd thought. I've been sorting my poetry into those forms or non-forms and I was surprised by some of the forms I've practiced. I don't remember practicing some of them and I keep thinking I should write more and practice more and more forms.

Overall I've had a delightful wander through my poetry of the past. It's wonderful to see how my ability has grown and how on average I produce better quality poems more frequently. That's not to say I don't write some terrible poetry still. But it's good to see that even the terrible poetry isn't as terrible as my terrible poetry of the past. lol

Now, Anyea, if you made it this far *here is some chocolate as a reward* And I promise I'll get into stories, someday. *grins* For some reason poetry is just easier. But that's probably because I have had so much more practice at it. Looking over my writing archives and there are only a handful of stories in there. I should write more stories, but it always seems so very painful. I need more practice. Meanwhile, I'll never give up my poetry.