#PoemADayFeb Prompts Are Here!

#PoemADayFeb people, here are your prompts!

We’ve put together 30, even though there’s only 28 days in Feb – feel free to write a couple extra, or if you are totally stuck on a prompt swap it over with one of the spare ones.

Some of the prompts are (form)s – this just means it’s a particular style of poetry form as a prompt rather than a subject prompt, and can be easily googled for the structure of those forms.

Don’t forget to use the hashtag if you want to share your poems, otherwise feel free to play along at home if you’d rather not – the point is to get writing and have fun.

So get your creative minds thinking, and we’ll see you here tomorrow, ready to smash out 28 days of poetry!

#PoemADayFeb Is BACK!

Hey! So, this time last year I paired up with fellow poetry peeps Laura Greaves and Paul Kohn to commit ourselves to writing a poem every single day in February – and thus, #poemadayfeb was launched.

Though crazy hard some days to keep up, we had a blast doing it and loved seeing so many others get on board, so have decided to run it again this year!

This isn’t about having to produce perfect work, it isn’t even about having to call yourself a poet, it’s simply about putting pen to paper and writing for the love of it, sparking some creativity and having some fun.

Personally for me, I have a fairly hectic Feb coming up, so I’ll be endeavouring to post a poem here every day but am also realistic enough to know some days this may not happen – again, it’s not about having to do this perfectly, just about jumping in and doing what you can.

Prompts will be posted tomorrow and we kick off on Friday – would love for you to join us, either Facebook or Instagram (or both) all you need to do is follow along with the #poemadayfeb hashtag, and make sure you add it to your posts.

Hope you can join us!

On Australia Day…

I will never forget the past.

I will never disregard the history of those who have suffered the unimaginable.

I will never turn a blind eye and pretend an invasion of the worst kind didn’t happen.

But I was born here, on these soils, too.

I am Australian, too.

And I am damn proud to call myself that, and will not be afraid, or ashamed, to celebrate that today; to be thankful for this land of opportunity, of freedom, of huge skies and vast oceans.

To know my children are held safe and not having to fight just to survive in a war-torn or poverty-stricken climate but can run barefoot on warm sand and swim and laugh and play with sun on their backs and salt on their skin.

To be thankful for everything this country is, and everything it offers.

This doesn’t mean I am trying to erase history, or act like it didn’t matter.

It did matter.

It does matter.

It will always matter.

But I cannot change history either.

I can only move forward.

We can only move forward.

Acknowledging the past.

Healing the past.

Reconciling the past.

But no longer allowing the past to divide us.

May we find the way forward, as one.

Gently, Gently Changing With the Seasons

I’ve been pretty quiet here lately.

I feel like the universe is asking me to do many hard things, challenging me to move away from everything in my life that has kept me from my true self; to cut ties, break cycles, let go of things I once thought I never could.

I feel pulled from the comfortable dwelling places I’ve frequented and propelled into something that feels hard to explain, something I don’t really understand myself. I just know I can no longer stay in these places once so familiar to me.

It’s exhausting work; this metamorphosis, this deep work of the soul. It’s why I haven’t been here much lately; I feel swaddled in the darkness of my cocoon with no idea of the outcome of this transformation but having an inherent understanding that I need to step back from the world at this time and trust this process, honour this process, and give myself the space needed to heal and change and grow without explanation or justification.

So while the rest of the world emerges into the new year with goals and plans and guns blazing, I am choosing to stay true to my own journey; to know I am not dictated by calendars, by clocks, or by society’s definition of timelines and success.

Instead I am allowing myself the permission and grace to surrender to this process; like nature: gently, gently changing with the seasons.