I used to think I was a shit poet. Or actually, just not a poet at all. But I liked to hang around with a bunch of literary friends, and I liked going to open mic nights, and I wanted to be the one reading. I started by reading a funny passage from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, and when I had everyone laughing, I was hooked. You know I had to try my own stuff next.
Fast-forward three years to last week. I still thought I was a shit poet (or a non-poet), and I was tired of it. I decided to take a poetry workshop and find out what all these people knew that I didn’t. So I did. (Warning: side-effects may include the inability to stop thinking in rhyme, a perpetual case of “Jabberwocky”-in-the-head, or death. But not really death.)
And then, I decided to do something really daring: I entered the poetry slam. If you’re not familiar, a poetry slam is a contest. There are judges who give you a numerical score on your poem and your performance of it, and each round, the two people with the lowest scores are dropped from the competition. In other words, if you’re wondering whether you suck, don’t enter a poetry slam unless you’re willing to find out for sure.
I’ve been on a kick of doing things in public that I don’t think I’m good at, so I felt like this would be the ultimate challenge.
I wanted to practice expressing myself even when I’m not confident.
There are three rounds in a poetry slam. We have a lot of amazing, heartfelt, talented poets in our community, so I wasn’t expecting to make it past the first round. But I wanted to have enough poems just in case, so I took all of my poems: the one I wrote two weeks ago, the one I wrote about my grief when Rick passed, the one I wrote in the parking lot on the way to the slam, and the two that I wrote for the Bad Love Poem contest I entered last year.
To my total amazement, the one I wrote in the parking lot was good enough to get me to the second round, and the one from two weeks ago went over big! So I needed a poem for the third round after all.
I didn’t want to go sad, so I picked one of the bad love poems. It was about this quasi-relationship I had last year, where the guy really didn’t have time for me, and I re-enacted being addicted to being ignored and feeling batshit crazy all the time.
The best poet definitely won first place (i.e., not me).
But all evening, I couldn’t stop smiling.
I had so much fun! It felt incredible to be up on stage, sharing my feelings and experiences—especially when people responded. I love making people laugh, and I love applause. Based on how fantastic I felt, I won the poetry slam.
I assumed that was it for that experience, and I resolved to start writing some fresh poems for the next one. Little did I know, there was more: the next day, the star of the bad love poem called me. We hadn’t spoken in months, and his name wasn’t in the poem, so it’s not like his friends called him up like, “Hey, this poetry bitch was talking about you!”
So it was how are you, great how are you, what have you been up to, oh that sounds great, etc. He was telling me he bought a sailboat, and it was too windy to sail that day, really nice sailboat, has a cabin with a kitchen, he lives there. Did I want to come see it?
It was a chilly, windy day, so I’m thinking, “what does this dumbass think we’re going to do on his sailboat when it’s too windy to sail?” I told him to invite me sometime when it’s warm and not so windy. Then I asked if he wanted to go see a play with me. True to form, he gave me a “maybe” that meant no. Ok, great talking to you, take care, bye.
…and then about 8 hours later, I realized: that was a booty call! It wasn’t “come see my sailboat,” it was “come see my saaaailboat.” And there I thought he was the dumbass!
That’s pretty funny, but then it kind of freaked me out. Did I call the Ghost of Crap-Relationship Past back into my life just by reading that poem? Yes, it appears that I did.
So you know what? I’m writing a new poem to call in what I want. There really is a lot of power in thinking about what you want, visualizing it, soaking in its energy, and making it real to yourself.
I invite you to play along.
What do you want more than anything? Do you want it badly enough to take 20 minutes marinating in it?
Visualizing is powerful. Writing it down adds another level, reading it out loud adds another, and sharing it adds more. You don’t have to be a poet—you can just write a list.
If you do this exercise, I’d love to hear your experiences. Play along on our Facebook page, and share your list if you want to give it more power. (This is where you get to find out how much you really want what you say you want!)
You can check out mine here. I plan to rearrange it and refine it, and then read it at the next poetry slam. But I’m showing it to you now so that you can see that it doesn’t have to be perfect—it just has to be real.
If what you want includes having a bestselling book, check out Project Bestseller. I have room for two clients starting in April. The price will be going up after that, so get in now if you want it!