The Poetry Marathon

What I Am Is What I Am and Who I Hope to Be

I’m a former high school English teacher living and writing in San Diego, California. Lover of animals, nature, big hearts, and rainy days, I spend most of my time engaged with friends and family or in the pursuit of art and entertainment. I’m not ashamed to admit I love to watch movies and tv shows, and I’ve recently discovered an appreciation for podcasts.

When I was younger, I played volleyball and basketball competitively and was inducted into my liberal arts university’s Hall of Fame, an achievement that reminds me my body used to be a fierce machine. Now, I read by the pool, practice yoga, and take long walks in parks, and I’m always thinking about how to jump back into a regular cross-training routine.

I love Halloween and Tarot and most things considered dark, strange, unexplainable, or unique. I’m trying to figure out how to apply my affinity for eerie, mysterious things to my art. My most recent creative passions include painting acrylic on canvas and drawing animal scenes for a coloring book compilation.

When poetry strikes me, which is sometimes every day, I write. I recently finished my childhood survivor memoir titled, When I Was Her Daughter, and am currently seeking a publisher. My work has been published in F*** Isolation, fws: journal of literature and art, Coffin Bell, and A Year in Ink, vol. 9.  

I have two cats, no kids, and one amazingly supportive husband. This August marks our eighth wedding anniversary. We love to travel and look forward to getting back out there to see the world once COVID calms the heck down.

This is my first poetry marathon.

“Greetings and Salutations, fellow marathoners!”

As I always tell myself every time:

It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

If you gotta take five, take five.

Hydrate!

For a change of perspective, step out occasionally to breathe in fresh air, walk the dog, play with the cat, whatever.

Write what you want, how you want; it’s just an opportunity to share and leave a little of yourself out there among like-minded souls.

At the end of the day, it’s like an virtual outing.

All the best, and have fun, everyone!

Hello! My name is Daria Lebedeva. I am an emerging poet using the format of the rhymed lines to pack in the depth and complexity of the thoughts provoking the thinking process to start up. I am Ph D in philosophy and probably because of it the choice of themes for poetic expressions is of the most challenging ones. I venture to label my style – that I think I am aware of and I am developing it in everyone’s stanza- as empathetic poetic storytelling placing woman in the center of narration. As much as I can I try to dive inside an imaginary personality – the protagonist is simply called ” she” in my poems- who faces some difficulties to overcome and as result to win over the routine of uselessness and idleness to arrive at the blessed island of a lifelong meaning. I need to add – the language of poetry is not my native language that makes the task more challenging for I have been writing in English and Polish, rare in Russian. So I must admit another label to my style- linguistic experiment. I am excited for trying poetry marathon for the first time being motivated to test my skills and imagination under pressure of time.

Hello 2020

Hello,

I am on this poetry journey with my little sister and best friend. We are pulling glyphs, images constructed from the letters of words, as inspiration. I spent a large chunk of this year transcribing years of poems from my journals to a Google doc. One more step in honoring the love of poetry in me. As this challenge too will be.

May the words find their merry way to you

 

 

 

Second-time marathon runner!

Last year was my first Poetry Marathon! It was a beautiful, frenzied, and challenging pursuit. It regrounded me in the act of writing and I look forward to this. May it be my touchstone onto which I can put down the words and feelings swirling in my mind, my guts, and my heart. I wouldn’t miss this for the world.

Hello Everyone!

Hello everyone! I’m a bit nervous looking at some of your accomplishments, but I know we’re all here for the same reason. We love words. We love poetry. Keeping that in mind, I’m becoming less intimidated and more excited as the day draws closer.

So, a little about me… Currently, I’m living in Oklahoma City. We returned here from my little country home in NW PA due to Covid. I’m a mom of four and a grandmother of six who has been writing since I was nine years old. Poetry helped me survive many things, and I now use it with my children and grandchildren. I’m finally completing my BA in English and Creative Writing and have begun to teach workshops and coach writers. There’s just so much to writing, it’s impossible to cover it all!

Introduction-Emy Deshotel

Hello! My name is Emy Deshotel, and I am a published poet, a freelance writer, and an aspiring novelist. I joined the marathon challenge myself and my creative process. I’m super excited to participate in this marathon and look forward to creating some great poetry!

Nice to virtually meet you

Hi! I’m Sarah. I’m here to generate new material and strengthen my daily writing practice.

 

A little about me…I received my MFA in Poetry Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. My poems appear or are forthcoming in: North American Review, Stone Highway Review, The Ilanot Review, Anthem Journal, Almost Five Quarterly, Wilde, Sinister Wisdom, Wicked Alice, ROAR and elsewhere. My chapbook Speak So It Anchors You was published in 2016. I reside in the shadow of the Catalina mountains in Tucson, Arizona with my 2 dogs, 3 fish and endless hauntings.

email me at :  poetguru2003@yahoo.com

Happy Writing Everyone.

 

Introduction

Setting a mark in the sand before my first marathon.

I wrote a lot of poetry when I was younger and trying to get through many difficulties of early life. I was inspired to come back to writing in the past year and it has been a witness to myself since.

I trained as a psychologist and then went on to focus on psychoanalysis. I have also had a life-long interest in esoterica and mysticism. I lived and travelled in many parts of the world, and my default medium for expression has been oil painting. My writing aims to blend these interests. I am interested in how emotional lived experiences can echo in a hermetic fashion a yearning for the sublime, played out in the diversity of the world around us.

I am intending to focus during the 24 hours on a broader range of themes, than I have written about lately. I was once told that a lack of sleep was a ‘cheap gnosis’, lets see where that takes me from the 15th hour onwards.

I posted some previous works before if anyone has an interest to see them.

Hiya!

This is my first poetry half marathon, and I’m really excited to create tomorrow.