If you’ve followed me for a year or so, you might be asking yourself, “Isn’t it time…”?

Yup. It is. Poetry Season is around the corner. During the holidays and the first couple months of the year (and, it seems, the way my life has gone in general lately…) my writing time is limited to quick bursts – time found between chores and obligations and promises to keep. Since I can usually do a poem in one fairly short sitting, that’s usually what gets done. Of course, going back later and editing and re-writing comes in other found moments.

Another reason is that Lucidity Poets’ Retreat, my favorite workshop of the year, happens to be in April (more about it as it gets closer) and I need a lot of new poems to take. So I have to start far in advance.

You see, writing has to come to me. I don’t sit down at the computer and say, Hmmm….I’m going to write now.  If I do that, I’m likely to stare at that cursor (an apt name sometimes) for a long time, with my mind as blank as the fresh stack of white paper in the printer.

Now and then a contest prompt or a query in another blog or article will spur creativity, but usually inspiration comes at very odd times, from strange origins – a phrase on the side of a box I’m putting up in the cabinet, a line spoken in an old movie I’m watching.  It may be coincidence, but when I’m doing something I really don’t feel like doing – laundry, housecleaning, balancing the checkbook, etc – my mind wanders and Pow!  There’s an idea! If I’m lucky, I can stop and write it down immediately. (Much to my chagrin, sometimes I read it later and can’t figure out why I thought it was so inspiring.)

And woe is me when a line or idea comes to me while I’m driving. My phone’s got a notepad that I can dictate into – talk, not text! – but I still have to pull over, find the app, and spend a few minutes with the thought. If I can’t do that, like in rush-hour traffic, I just have to hope that I can remember it when I get home.

On a glorious evening or weekend, though, several ideas might pop up, and I burn up the keyboard, writing so fast.

Sometimes it’s a whole series…the first poem will trigger the second, then a third, and so on. Or a theme will emerge and I’ll come up with several, connected in some way. Love it when that happens! 

At any rate, my mind is ‘waxing poetic’ ( hmm…there’s a phrase to research…) these days.  We’ll see how that turns out.