Anything can be a poem?

Putting a minimum requirement on creativity. Is it possible to Type-A yourself out of a creative rut?

What feels like a long time ago (but was actually less than a year ago), I started this project/goal/enigma called "Anything can be a poem." The concept being that I would write one poem a day for 100 days. I had tried these self-imposed writing goals before, but never with such a low bar. The bar being, literally anything I wrote with intention would be considered a poem.

Middle-school-me would be shocked that I’d just said poems could be written without rules. What about the rhythm? What about ABAB | AB AB | and the endless forms of rhyme scheme I was tested on but never could remember? Turns out free-verse poetry is a thing. Thank you Dr. Gary McDowell, my lovely and quirky Intro to Poetry professor.

So with a low bar on creativity and an Instagram story post-a-day to keep me honest, I started on this journey. And the journey was a lot of things, but mostly vulnerable. Because if you can make anything into a poem, that includes your fears, failures and deepest pondering. Also, if anything can be a poem, you share the poems when they’re brilliant, redundant and downright pathetic (rephrase here could be “simple”, but we’re always our own worst critic).

The response was something I couldn’t have predicted. The poems I had thought so little about - truly just my inner most thoughts poured into my Notes app - had people I hadn’t heard from in years in my DMs. For all the ways we are so different from one another there are a million little things that connect us through human experience and truth.

So 100 days turned into 200 (maybe not consecutive days, but I got there steadily) and soon enough I had the makings of a poetry collection. A forced habit that now made for routine - my Type-A mother would be so proud… and honestly, I’m proud of me. Because art is beautiful, but creativity can feel fleeting and hard to pin down. Cultivating a practice of giving your head the space to write what you’ve got living up there is religious in a way that I can get behind.

My suggestion? Start today. Start with one word. Start with a feeling. It really is as simple as, “Anything can be a poem.”