Welcome to Shitty Poetry Month!
I dare you to write shitty poetry with me.
♥ Shitty Poetry Month ♥
*Ｓｈｉｔｔｙ= 𝕾𝖙𝖆𝖗𝖙 ☆ 𝕳𝖊𝖗𝖊 ☆ 𝕴𝖋 ☆ 𝕿𝖊𝖗𝖗𝖎𝖋𝖎𝖊𝖉 ☆ & ☆ 𝕿𝖗𝖚𝖘𝖙 ☆ 𝖄𝖔𝖚𝖗𝖘𝖊𝖑𝖋
Recently I heard from my friend, who’s an art therapist, that April is National Poetry Month in the USA. They were sharing this because someone they know was hosting a “poem a day” challenge-like course throughout the month. When I saw this, I immediately thought “That looks just like the kind of thing I’ve been looking for; someone to give me a daily prompt and some accountability so I can get into the habit of regularly writing poems.”
Naturally, that thought was immediately replaced with the voice of fear and perfectionism: you can’t commit to a daily poem, the poems will objectively suck, you’re not even a poet, you’re too busy anyway, it’s too expensive, if you share them people will judge you.
Thankfully, I have some hard-earned skills in the area of noticing and quieting down self-criticism. And one of my favourite is audaciousness. As in, when I stop and hear myself, and anchor into my values, I recognise that taking risks and being a DIY little ratbag that does things counter to the rules, is something I deeply believe in. That daring to be seen as “shitty”, or as a beginner, is actually fucking punk and important—and something that’s served my creative and personal growth well.
So when I let audaciousness speak, it sounded like: just do it yourself! Make it easy, make it fun, be creatively defiant enough to do shitty poetry, on purpose, in the name of learning. And hey, invite other people to join you.
So here we are: April is Shitty Poetry Month on The Dreamer.
I’m inviting you to embody your most audacious parts and join me in putting words on paper (or screen) everyday for a month. No wait, I DARE you too.
And as I said on IG recently, I will be right there alongside you. I have only written a handful of poems in my life and only shared two publicly. But I know that writing makes me feel ALIVE and I know there are no rules here. You don’t have to be a certain kind of person, or creative, to feel the emotional and therapeutic benefits of a daily writing practice. You don’t have to write the longest poems, or use the most metaphors, or whatever. You don’t even have to make sense! Or be longer than one sentence! You just have to be willing to sit there and put stuff down.
I want this to feel easeful. I want to safeguard you (and myself) from any pressure. You don’t have to share your words. But I’ll tell you something: there is nothing like using your voice, and being seen using it. I know for a fact that the people who can be bothered to read the comments on The Dreamer, are kind-hearted, thoughtful people who seek connection with others like them. That’s why I’m inviting (DARING) you to share your daily Shitty Poems in the comment section, everyday, below this post.
What if you’re too shy? That’s okay. You don’t have to and certainly not everyday. What if you want to *really* be seen in your truth daily? You’re welcome to also use the hashtag #ShittyPoetryMonth on IG. I already checked, it doesn’t exist yet, so it’s all ours, as a community to occupy and enjoy.
Some reasons to join me for the inaugural Shitty Poetry Month:
☆ Stretch yourself beyond your creative comfort zone in a supportive closed space.
☆ Feel safe playing with words a.k.a no pressure to *like* it. It’s meant to be SHITTY!
☆ Give yourself a mindful, slow, daily experience of expressive writing, from the heart.
☆ Be witnessed in your voice with the option to spread it further #ShittyPoetryMonth
☆ Learn how to stay with discomfort and challenge your tolerance for imperfection.
☆ It’s free and extremely low-lift in terms of time and energy. Give it anywhere from a few minutes of your time a day, to an hour or so. Up to you.
The “shitty” acronym in Shitty Poetry Month says it all, really: Start here if terrified and trust yourself. I like to use the word “scrappy” with my clients, as a way to describe the small steps our creative work requires us to take, in order to progress into its fullest form. Scrappy steps = small and crappy steps. Writing a “shitty” poem a day is one example. That’s what we’re all here to do in this life, isn’t it? Practice trust through taking a small step in a direction we identify as good. Over and over.
So are you in? If so, consider this the first of 4x weekly emails I’ll be sending out, with the seven daily prompts you’ll be responding to that week. Remember: share your daily poem (using the daily prompt as a title) in the comments of this post and/or on IG using #ShittyPoetryMonth. I hope you join me!
You weren’t born to hold your tongue, you were born to express yourself.
☆ SHITTY POETRY MONTH ~ WEEK 1 ☆
Day 1: Awakening into…
Day 2: The dawn…
Day 3: On improvising…
Day 4: Nourishment is…
Day 5: What is discipline…
Day 6: When I pay attention…
Day 7: I see flowers…
These prompts are yours to make use of in any way you see fit. They are intentionally sparse, but hopefully, still full of associations and possibilities. Let them dance with your imagination, your memory, and your emergent meanings. And please hold these prompts lightly. Lean on them as a theme, or starting word, if that feels good. Or let yourself be taken elsewhere by the mind’s winds. Just have fun. Now off you go! Day one starts April 1st. That’s today!
*PSA* There is a line limit in the Substack comments, so you may need to reformat your poems (putting more words on each line) in order to fit them. Example: My first poem was 24 lines and the last few were cut off, so I simply edited it to take up less lines.
Tarot card of the week ~ The Hanged Woman
I’m so happy to see this card, this week, because it’s the acknowledgement of discomfort. Creative discomfort and otherwise. Think of the hanging figure as a caterpillar that’s about to dissolve into goo. Or a monk in training, whose hanging upside down is a test of his endurance and commitment to meditation. Or a person who’s about to use their voice, or act, in a really scary way—a way that runs counter to their whole emotional and behavioural pattern of being. For those of us with a pattern of being that involves bracing for danger constantly, it can feel like we’re about to die. And in a way, we are. This card comes directly before the Death card for a reason.
What part of you needs to be dissolved, let go, or made peace with, this week, so you can experience growth? That “made peace with” part is important here. Because again, many of us braced to the boots are very rigid, or black and white, when it comes to change. You do not need to reject or dehumanise or belittle parts of yourself that you might recognise you’re outgrowing. That doesn’t work. Except to make you battle yourself 24/7 and feed into your shame. You only need to get to know these parts, what they consider their job or duty to you (self-protection), and show them some real love and compassion.
The Hanged figure doesn’t struggle. They don’t even find a way down from being strung up. They just stay with it. All of it. That’s how they earned that halo around their head. Because when we learn to stay with it, real and radical change occurs.
Xo Jerico
*It’s called The Hanged Woman in my deck, Neo Tarot, and The Hanged Man or The Hanged One in other decks. Call it whatever you like <3
How to work with me
☆THE DREAMER☆ is a free newsletter and online space for those dreaming at the intersection of creativity, therapeutic work, ecology, magic, and neurodiversity. If you enjoy The Dreamer, pass it on! And you can support my work in the following ways:
~ Book yourself (or a friend) a tarot reading with me. Slots open for April/May now!
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~ Join my self-paced meditation + mindful journalling course, Write About Now.
Awakening into something like interest
A question not yet known but felt as fizzy foot and fingers tingling.
A movement? A word? There is too much here in
hot minds flooded by violence and kindness and everything else
life forms soft and raw can tolerate.
I don’t know the question but the answer’s not fixing.
It takes no fixing to see how sturdy things fall
and soft things rise or how butterflies drink tears from crocodiles eyes
or the mystery of hope born and reborn again or the way some things
only grow in dark places.
When I pay attention…
I see a single white
hair on my dog’s back
and stroke it.
One, two, four more.
Tiny flecks in a
forest of black fur.
I see her whiskers.
Hear her breath.
Feel it on my face
as I lean it in,
secretively
and wonder
what she dreams about.