Hello friends. I’m so excited to share my first post here. My name is Natasha and creating stuff with my own hands has always been something that I liked to do. It just gives you that feeling that you can better connect with yourself, it’s a way to process your life on a deeper level. For today, from my future posts series of “I made this” I want to share my process of creating an inspirational poetry piece.
Now, my first question was, “But how do I even start?” Well, first things first, I went ahead and looked for the definition of poetry, and dear Wikipedia went like: “Poetry (derived from the Greek poiesis, "making") is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, a prosaic ostensible meaning.”
So, “to evoke meanings”, good enough as a starting point, to create a personal piece based on my own lived experiences.
After staring at my blank piece of paper for at least half an hour, I decided to focus on one single line and that is about finding our authentic selves. As a start, I made a list of 4 words that came to my mind when I thought of the word “authentic”, and those were: courage, mask, real, self. Using these 4 words I created a short line, trying to use and describe it in a “more “poetic language. So went ahead and thought how to use one of the poetic devices out there: similes, metaphors or personification.
It turned out like this:
“No mask can hide your true self, so have the courage to spread your wings and find yourself.”
Now, I could’ve typed it on the computer and print it out, but wanted to make it more personal and handwrite it, although I slightly regretted it afterwards, as my handwriting is absolutely hideous.
Now, after having my piece of paper ready, I wanted to create a visual for it, so went and thought of a way to enhance my piece, either by using certain objects or a setting to go well and emphasize its meaning. This was the most fun, as I had the chance to experiment as I searched for beautiful backgrounds and held up the piece of paper in front of them, which turned out amazingly in the autumn context. A simple wall, some leaves and branches, a sunset, on the grass, all of these can add another contextual layer to your poetry.
There is no wrong or right when it comes to discovery, so after I had enough fun with random backgrounds and took lots of pictures, I decided to choose a small blooming rose, because when I read my line I felt that it would fit it visually.
To photograph it I just used my phone, centered the paper and moved the rose around and tried different compositions. After I decided on my final picture, I just edited it a bit, directly from my phone and that was it.
Thank you so much for reading about my first experience in creating my first piece of poetry. I hope that I have “inspired” someone out there to try out it also and have as much fun as I did.
In the end, when I look at it, it feels more like an inspirational quote than a poem but hey, I made it 