Category: Uncategorized
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Remove Unforgiveness: the sound of your voice
Your words are truly powerful. You have the ability to speak life or death–negativity– into your life and situation with your voice. This is considered true in pretty much every religious context, but has also been acknowledged in psychology and scientific contexts as well. What we speak out of our mouths matters.
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Remove Unforgiveness: The Evidence (Part 4)
As a creative writer, it’s hard to type this, but imagine yourself as a garden. Because this is the point in the series where the often-used symbols of seeds, plants, and fruits come in.
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Exercise is to Writing as Writing is to Exercise
Writers write. Writers work-out, too. While we spend a lot of time mulling over ideas, working, and generally adulting, we also workout. I LOVE seeing photos on social media of writers going to the gym.
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Becoming a Poet: Making It
This is the final post in the series. My mother has five children. She has always considered me her turtle. And I am–sometimes to my own frustration. But being a turtle works, too, because little by little, bead by bead, you are moving forward.
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Becoming A Poet: The MFA
I wish I was a better student and peer when I was in graduate school. I had an exceptional opportunity at the University of Alabama. I had free tuition and a monthly stipend. My professors in the creative writing program were kind. I finally had the chance to write and focus on the love of…
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Becoming A Poet: Belonging
Even though I practically slept in the computer lab on campus so I could write, I still wouldn’t call myself a poet. I didn’t own a laptop. Real poets looked cool, spoke cool, and wore cool shoes– not to mention they were mega-talented and mysterious.
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Becoming a Poet: I Choose You
I wasn’t a spoken word artist. The words moved out of me with a tangible rush as I read, but as much as I loved vowels I didn’t stretch them out over my tongue and colorfully use my hands and body while I read.
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Becoming a Poet: The Side-Chick
At 17 years old I made a decision that would change the course of my life. I moved eight hours away from home (Charleston, S.C.) and began my college education in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I didn’t know anyone. My biological father lived in the same town, but he would continue to be MIA for as long…
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Becoming a Poet: Just Messing Around
Maya Angelou was the balm to my loveless and desperate teenage heart. She knew what it was like to love and not be loved back.
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Becoming a Poet: Before I Found Poetry
This is the beginning of a series that tells the story of how I became a poet and why I love poetry. That’s me (second from the left) standing (very) awkwardly with a group of friends.
Kwoya Fagin Maples 