Why I'm here

I have been a writer of some sort all my life - it always came easily to me in high school and in college, which was very helpful in earning my B.A. in History and my editor-in-chief job for the Eckerd College Triton Tribune (I think it's called something different now - that was in the early '90s). After college, I used my writing skills for press releases, human interest stories, newsletter articles, blog posts, and social media marketing. So, that kind of writing is not new to me.

However, personal writing is something I've only discovered in the last three or four years. I write in my journal almost every day, which I find cathartic. I never thought of myself as someone who could write poetry, though. My writing was fact-based, researched -- not "flowery" or "poetic." Thanks to my friend Jesse White, the Arts and Spirituality Coordinator at Pendle Hill in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, I discovered that poetry can be whatever you want (or need) it to be.

My poetry is definitely on the "narrative" side of things - not quite prose, but close. After Jesse introduced me to the Poetry Coffeehouse at Pendle Hill, I started writing and sharing poetry with the friendly group of extremely talented poets. At first, I felt mine wasn't good enough. After all, almost everyone there had been writing poetry for years, decades - and some had been published. Who was I to think I could keep up? Well, thanks to the support of that group and other friends, I've decided that my poetry IS good enough to share.

Not everyone is going to like my style, or what I say, but I'm doing this for me more than anyone else. My poetry is very dependent upon my mood at the time, as I'm sure is everyone else's. I do try to inject a little humor where I can, as THAT comes to me naturally. The scariest part of this is putting it out there for the world to see, but if I can perhaps give someone else like me the courage to put themselves out there, it's a good thing.

We can all be like the Cowardly Lion, who found that he did have courage all along.