When did you get the confidence to show your poetry?

CassandraW · May 5, 2016

two turns with me isn't that bad.

B.D. Eyeslie · May 5, 2016

William Haskins said:
i share poetry to get a reaction. i don't feel alive unless i feel like i am penetrating the fabric of another life.

You have certainly penetrated more than a few bonnets here, William.

CassandraW · May 5, 2016

I feel so used.

kborsden · May 6, 2016

For me, strange as this may sound to many who know me on this forum, it took a good while before I had the confidence to even discuss the substance of poetry. I've always written poetry, well, always in the sense that I remember writing it from an early age, but it was something I did as a very personal thing. I answered similarly here:

kborsden said:
... for a while I was actually afraid, and a little ashamed to talk about, or admit that I wrote and enjoyed poetry. It was almost as if I needed to 'come out' as a poet before I could truly progress with it. From my mid-teens to early twenties, it was a kind of dirty personal secret. I had an amazing English teacher at comprehensive school*, Mr. Hotton, who was one of the most passionate teachers I've ever encountered with regards to the English language. As I grew up, suffered and recovered from a nervous breakdown, I found myself looking back more and more frequently to that period (as if in an attempt to rebuild who I believed I was) and finding inspiration in his lessons years after. It was revisiting those lessons that pushed me to start seeking publication for some of my work, and the feedback from publications that drove me to look at it with a more discerning eye; getting a few pieces out there validated me and gave me the nudge I needed to stop hiding the poet--then of course discovering AW was a blessing ...

Debbie V · May 7, 2016

I had a teacher in high school who encouraged me to submit to the literary magazine. Or maybe, I just thought I should sub there. (I'm not sure, but it is my first published work.) Poetry was the way my shy self found a voice. I could put that voice out there without having to actually face the reactions to it directly. It was an ego boost in itself.

From there, I showed poems to people I thought would appreciate them, friends and family. I also got rejected by Seventeen. It was after I began writing for children that I came upon a market I thought I had something for. I subbed an old poem. I've revised a number of poems I wrote way back and gotten a few published as well as a few newer ones. The ones I submit for publication get posted for critique here first. I don't want form rejections. Better to hear bad news from you folks, when there's still time to fix the bad.

Sometimes you just have to push yourself to take that step. The confidence comes later.

When did you get the confidence to show your poetry?

CassandraW

B.D. Eyeslie

CassandraW

kborsden

Has a few recurring issues

Debbie V

Mentoring Myself and Others