I’d always wanted a room of my own, and craved space and freedom to write. I’d been writing poems since college, but never had the patience to keep a journal together. I would write them on cocktail napkins and leave them for bartenders, or give them to boys on the street. I would leave them on trains, or write them on mirrors in lipstick. I never thought of myself as a poet; just as a poetic girl.

I’ve been writing and blogging for many years, and I make a living as a creative, but I just never thought I could become a poet. Then something clicked a couple of years ago. I never realized that you could just announce to yourself one fine day, what it is you want to be, and then become it. It’s been liberating, really.

I decided to go back to my roots and write poems. I wrote one each day and published them on my website beginning January 1, 2012. By spring I had carved out a special space for myself within the daily work of poetry. I realized that I had created a room of my own. I even told someone last summer that I was a poet. I called myself a ‘poEt’. Surprisingly they did not laugh. Instead they shook my hand and seemed intrigued.

I had reclaimed my passion and was becoming me again. It took a long time, but it sure felt good to get there.

My poetry is the way I scream. It is the way I love and cradle my despair. It’s how I feel human. And I hope it will be a gift to my children. I want them to know and understand this complex and messy woman. I want them to be able to see me from different angles, to peek into my mind. I hope I can give them a little comfort on some dark day in the future, that they can read my words and feel my love jump from the page.

I write poems for my boys, my husband, and for all of the people in my life that I have ever loved. Sometimes I write about the past just so I can create a poem that I wish I would have had back then. And I hope I write a poem that you love. I hope that it stays with you and gives you fire. I hope that it gives you that glow you get when you connect language with emotion and life.

That’s my hope.

Originally published in our print issue SPACE.

About the Author

Amy Turn Sharp

Amy Turn Sharp is a poet, freelance writer and toy maker. She wrote a poem everyday for the entire year of 2012. When she’s not writing, Amy and her husband make wooden toys for their company, . .