Welcome To Treegap, Words Everlasting

Welcome to Treegap Poets, a space for ideas, conversation, and mostly poetry, but here any form of self expression goes. The book that shaped my childhood and the inspiration for this blog, "Tuck Everlasting," captured my imagination and inspired a love of reading and writing, but not always in a conventional way-- like the book I always wanted to capture a mood, a scene. Poems always felt a better fit for that, yet at the same time I became so self critical of each word that my writing waned in the last decade.

This summer marks the 10th anniversary of my Nana’s death, the woman who loved reading to me, sometimes in funny animated voices, and who loved reading anything and everything I wrote. I never felt judged or nervous about sharing anything with her. This space is an effort to pay homage to her and of all of the goodness she inspired, but also to pay respect to the person I wanted to be when she was still living.

I’ve issued myself a challenge: A poem a day for a year. I’ve tried to do this before but it’s easy to quit when you write in a journal and don’t tell anyone. It’s easy to quit any plan if you simply don’t show up. This blog is about showing up every day, even if it’s the worst poem ever written. My rules for myself are:

1) Try to be thoughtful—nothing recycled entirely, but don’t cop out by posting crappy poems written in college.

2) Not everything needs to be a masterpiece. Give up trying to create “the one” in a day and just learn to make the best I can that day and be happy with the process.

3) No length requirements. I went through a few Haiku phases and once spent days on three lines trying to make the best one word, syllabically interesting three line poem (two bad examples below) and that’s not what this is about, unless I’m inspired to do it in a day. That said, length doesn’t represent effort or inspiration:

Sun

Triumphant
Precipitation
Disappears

Upon a One Word Haiku

Conceptualize
Phonologicalism
Morphologically

Life has taught me that it really does help to set goals and live each day one day at a time, making each 24 hours count. I hope creative minds join in and are unafraid to share poems, prose, good reads, or whatever is on your mind.

Your Treegap Caretaker,

Ghibli