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May Flowers: The Collected Poems of a 31-Day Writing Challenge
Paperback
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jun 25 2023
Pages: 72
Weight: 0.24
Height: 0.15 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
When I was younger, I used to write all of the time. I'd write poems and short stories and even novellas. I carried writing journals with me everywhere. This continued into my mid-20's, when I had laptops and I'd sometimes turn out 10-20 pages of good material in a day when I had the opportunity. I'd write about anything. I never did anything with the writing, and I ended up losing most of it over the years - journals left behind or destroyed, hard drives crashed, etc. And, eventually, through a series of traumatic events, I eventually just quit writing. It happens. I'm by far not the only person to whom this phenomenon has happened. But, it was really saddening for me, because writing wasn't just something I did - it was part of how I defined who I was. I was a writer. And, if someone doesn't write anymore, hasn't written in years, how can they call themselves a writer anymore? The simple answer is, they can't. And so, for a long time, I haven't called, or considered, myself a writer - but deep down, I've always planned to start writing again, eventually.
About two years ago, I experienced the most traumatic of events that I've experienced thus far. It put me into a state from which I wasn't sure I'd ever recover. To do so, I had to finally face a lot of realities I'd been avoiding for the majority of my life. It took quite a while before it felt like I was making any progress whatsoever. Even once I was, it was visual artwork where I was first able to start breaking through the walls of my creativity. Only recently have I begun to be able to start writing, and even now it's a labor of persistence and hope, and maybe love eventually.
Writing is still hard, and it's hard to write without specific inspiration and motivation. Everyone who writes knows that the number one rule of writing is to write every day. So, I decided to do a month-long poetry writing challenge for the month of May (2023). For 31 days, I would write a poem every day, responding to a different prompt. This wasn't part of any formal poetry writing challenge - this was just something I was doing for myself, to get myself writing daily, and giving myself a structured way to do so.
These poems are written with my personal experiences and emotions. As such, you will see certain themes running through them from one poem to another. Please understand that much of my writing is still rooted in my grief and pain and the healing process. This is the nature of that process - we have to work through it; we cannot skip over or around it. But, when we acknowledge it, name it out loud, learn to cope with it - that is when we can learn to move on in a healthy way, finally, sometimes for the first time.
I hope when you read this, you find something that makes you feel seen, or heard, or understood, or that you find something inspiring, or at least something amusing that makes you smile or laugh a little. No matter what it is, I hope this book brings you some kind of positive experience. Writing it was a positive experience for me, and it means a lot for me to share it with you.
May Flowers is the result of a 31-day challenge writer and poet Frances F. Martin imposed upon herself for the month of May, 2023. In the midst of trauma, pain, heartache, and finally, healing, Ms. Martin used poetry as one tool to find her voice, give her strength, and aid her recovery. In an effort to help encourage her writing activities, she embarked on a month-long journey of poetry prompts which led her to craft poems which are often sad, sometimes bitter, sometimes bittersweet, and at times sweet... but also funny, witty, and clever. The range of poetry contained in this short collection of just thirty-one poems is extremely vast, covering a wide array of styles and subject matters. The themes speak to love, loss, family, home, society, and more - things we can all related to.Also in
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