Poetry acknowledged invisible things, the things that haunt us. Amber Haines shares her journey into poetry.

"I used poetry as a way to preserve my privacy and test out my hypotheses of the world. It was my way of encoding my views so no one could tell me my observations of people, places or things were childish, or incorrect." Kathryn Neel shares her journey into poetry.

Poet Todd Davis shares his journey into poetry, inspired by his father.

Paula J. Lambert describes her Journey into Poetry, from aspiring fiction writer to published poet, by way of pigs and prose.

So much of life depends upon the lighting. Under the fluorescent bulbs of Grade 9 English, I turned to page 646, or something like that, and discovered poetry.  Unit VII probably had a catchy and alliterative title, but I don’t remember it. I remember seeing bold-faced words, eerie line breaks (though I didn’t know the [...]

I didn’t start writing poetry until I was in my mid-forties. Growing up, I wasn’t the kind of kid who wrote poetry or holed up in his room writing a journal. As a teenager, I loved the singer-songwriters of the sixties — Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell – and I [...]

Daddy sang age-old ballads, country tunes, folk songs, and recited Edgar Allen Poe. A traveler with an adventurous spirit, he regaled me with long stories of swimming in lakes, rivers, and oceans, or of indigenous people in faraway lands who welcomed him into their lives and homes. He’d been disoriented but never lost in the [...]

I don’t recall how it happened; how I got bamboozled (love that word) into writing poetry. This much I know: L.L. Barkat is to blame. (Handcuff her, folks. Lead her away.) She recommended I start by reading Billy Collins so I did and loved it. I loved how his words only made sense if you [...]

I know poetry is where I'm meant to be. I just can't escape it.

I liked poetry at that point in my life, but I didn’t love it.

After my mom died, I thought I’d never write another poem. Enter Susan Wooldridge’s book Poemcrazy.