Here’s a #BehindtheVerse Round-Up for the month of February. I know that it’s a tad late but I figured that while I can’t commit to writing one poem a day for National Poetry Writing Month, I’d start doing this instead. I already got a head start with Lola’s Garden yesterday so I’ll kick off the weekend with this haiku and micro poem round-up. Hopefully, I can make this a monthly thing from now on.
After months without an update on the IG page and even after I purchased a domain name for this website, I still couldn’t bring myself to share my words with the world. 2021 rolled around before I finally came to my senses. I was still a little apprehensive, so I just decided to share a haiku I made years ago.
I forced myself to finally come out of my shell and FINALLY invited my close friends to like my page. That was such a feat for me because I consider poetry to be very personal, which translates to nobody but me ever reads it. So this haiku was a start of a commitment I made to myself— to make an effort to share my words with the world.
Since I have finally revived my IG page last February, I wanted to start posting micro poems partly because they are more digestible to my friends who will read my posts, but mainly because I wanted to ease myself into sharing my words. I wrote this one with the clear intention of posting a belated Valentine’s Day post, hence the Late Valentine title.
I am not really overly cheesy when it comes to love and whatnot, but sometimes I wanted to convey my feelings into what I write. This one is a succinct wordplay to love. It expresses attachment and emotions without getting so in your face about it. And with just five short lines, I wanted to give some sort of belated Happy Valentine’s greeting to the post.
Quote: “Poetry is a vulnerability that I’m still trying to learn.”
I remembered writing this because I was still a little hesitant about sharing my works on my IG page. This post is a reminder to myself that it’s ok to be vulnerable to the world. The mere fact that I’m finally sharing my poems is already a big win for me.
Behind the scenes, I was also prepping myself into submitting to literary magazines. With all the political turmoil and economic unrest in the Philippines, I realized that I unconsciously wrote a lot of protest art with poetry as my medium. While the words I’ve written are still not enough for concrete action to take place, I wanted my poems to reach a larger audience in the hopes that I can share what’s happening in the Philippines with the world.
Haiku: Darling we’re the storm
At last, a haiku with proper punctuations. If you’ll notice the first post, I was so deep into my head about whether or not I will finally post on the page that I FORGOT TO EDIT THE ACTUAL POST. Now, dare I say that I’m getting the hang of this aspirational Insta-poet thing? Ha, I wish that’s really the case.
One of my friends wrote a comment on the post and said that it reminded her of Taylor Swift’s lyrics. The Swiftie in me was very flattered indeed. This is also the post where I finally committed to posting #HaikuTuesdays once a week. Not only will it force me to think of that 5-7-5 syllables every week but it will also help me dedicate my time to actually doing this whole IG poetry thing. Believe me that more than just writing, there’s actually a bit of work that goes into curating these posts.
This one is another poem from the vault. I wrote it so many years ago and it was just sitting there on my Evernote App all by its lonesome. I figured that it was nice enough to share on the page, so there you have it. The title, Three Words, was actually written before I wrote the poem. I would usually come up with the title after I write the entire piece. But this one I knew that I had to write something out of the phrase, “three words.”
And there you have it! These are five poems from February 2021. I’ll be doing March next. Stay tuned!
Neen Writes 