Poetry and Embarrassment

Poetry and Embarrassment: The Unlikely Partners in Growth and Self-Exploration 

Over the past year, I’ve been contemplating the importance of poetry quite a bit, and what better time to share my thoughts than National Poetry Month! Let me start by saying I am in no way an expert on this topic, nor am I a talented poet. Although I read plenty of poetry in my day-to-day life, I didn’t try my hand at writing it until I was forced to for a college course last summer.

I was incredibly nervous when it came time to share my first poem.

I worried that people would judge me and my writing. I was hyper-focused on how my peers would perceive and evaluate my poetry. Ultimately, I was sick to my stomach when I clicked submit. 

Now, this may or may not come as a surprise to you, but nobody made fun of me. On the contrary, my classmates were kind and genuinely excited about reading and discussing each other’s poems. It’s almost as if people aren’t always looking for, or concentrating on, my faults! 

My apprehension slowly evolved into excitement with each new assignment. I stopped spending my writing process worrying about what people would think and, as a result, was able to dive deeper into unleashing my unconscious mind without fear of judgment. 

Sharing poetry inspired an interconnectedness between my classmates and me. A sense of community was born as we were taken out of our isolated little worlds and shown a larger picture of the human experience. Through this course, I gained confidence in myself and an understanding of the hundreds of other worlds being experienced by others. 

I continued writing poetry even after the class ended.

The act of sitting down and writing turned into a practice in mindfulness and self-exploration. It was my time to loosen up and let everything out in a healthy, creative way. We are forever changing, and it can be a challenge to keep up; poetry allows us to reflect, dream, reminisce, actively observe, and fantasize through all of these little evolutions. 

When creating any sort of art, you invite the potential of negative evaluation, the foundation of embarrassment. Poetry is no different, and sharing that poetry with the world can be terrifying. But, lucky for us, embarrassment makes us better humans. It opens up the opportunity for us to push past our comfort zone, tackle ambitious goals, and put ourselves in the position to fail (sometimes publicly.) The threat of embarrassment lives at the edge of our comfort and experience, and that is also where we grow best. If I never convince you of anything else, please let me convince you to choose growth over a desire for safety. 

Want to give it a try? I’ll make it easy for you by giving you two of my favorite writing prompts. If you’re feeling brave or, even better, if you’re feeling scared and embarrassed, I’d be excited to see you share what you write with us. Email us at general@beniciamagazine.com or tag us on Instagram if you post it for your friends to see. Maybe you’ll inspire someone else to grow too.

Prompts: 

1. Go to a bookstore or library. Visit seven different sections and choose a single book from each (science fiction, classics, history, etc.) Grab the first book and flip to a random page. Write down the first word that you see. Repeat this for each book. Using these seven words, write a poem. 
2. Listen to one of your favorite songs and write a poem directly after, based on the feelings and emotions it brought about in you. Let music inspire poetry! 

Last month we asked our readers to submit some of their own poetry for us to share. These are just a few of the amamazing submisssions we received! Head over to our Instagram for a look at the rest.