Tag: daily poetry

How To Get Comfortable Performing Your Poetry 

by sarahbellummental

I remember when I first started performing poetry as a teenager. It was intimidating but the best kind of exciting. I compare public speaking to the best adrenaline experience and high that is legal. I’m not a center of attention type of person, but I’ve always gotten joy and such a challenge from speaking my words in front of people.

I figured this part of myself out in Speech class back in college. Everyone hated it except for me. I took it as a challenge, and it was an evolution to get better each time. My hands shook when I brought my outline up with them. I secretly whispered to myself one of these days. We’re going to have our stuff memorized.

Memorizing is easy and difficult for me. Performing just comes with whatever poem I’m speaking. I remember what brought this poem into life. I remember its creation and the feelings I had surrounding it. Then, I let the lightning strike, don’t deny them, and go full breath into the poem.

The problem is that I have a low threshold for stimuli. I get overstimulated easily. Noises, music, and anything can make my mind focus on that instead of what I would say next.

I’ve always found ease with telling stories versus poetry.

Stories I know like my backhand and the lines in my palm.

Poems are structured to carry rhythm, rhyme, syntax, alliteration that if I miss just one word, the whole structure is thrown off balance.

So, how do you get comfortable performing?

Like anything, repetition, repeat, and repeat until it becomes a second tongue you wear. I have to see the poem, index cards go into the visual, hear the poem, and combine holding the poem too (kinesthetic) to get it to solidify.

When I recite a poem from memory, I can see it in my head like my finger is moving down its length. But, this works best in a quiet environment. So, I’ve started practicing outdoors on walks, in my car, and in other places where I can’t control the setting.

I love when people start reading and then move to perform their poems. There’s such power in hearing your words out loud. If you trip up, don’t go back and fix the word. Move forward. People will forget the slip-up, and it also works to keep your confidence up. Everyone messes up. It’s how you recover from the stumble that defines you.

Poetry Proves My Power 

by sarahbellummental

I saw a post where they were asking you your mantra that you live by now to kind of rewrite things. My response was longer, “I will use poetry to bring back my power.” Shortened version of this is “Poetry Proves My Power.” What does that mean?

It means that poetry is used to access kindness. Is used to not exactly rewrite narratives but to write them in a way that I feel it all over again. And just the act of being present in it and bringing others along for the ride if I do share it performing is just part of a power dynamic being brought back to me.

I’ve always been that odd dock. Weed in a bouquet of flowers. I am that one that you meet and people immediately go, “you don’t care what people think, do you?”

I like to wear my joy on the outside.

I love nature like it can love me back.

I keep seeing things that if I’m not careful I’ll overlook.

The crazy amount of bees on goldenrod when they bloom. Hundreds of them. Then I think of maybe I can grow these and help the bees?

My mind is list of connections that connect perfectly because the world is interconnected.

It’s ridiculous all this beauty out there. So, I write because even the mundane can be exponentially mind blowing.

Some information on my workshops and projects: 

Talking about the Mental Highway, I do have a workshop with WAN Academy on June 6th doing just that. Writers, non-writers, poets, people who don’t call themselves poets but are pretty adept at words are all invited. To buy tickets for that is this link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/wan-academy-tapping-into-your-poetic-mental-highway-w-sarah-bellum-mental-tickets-254927183067?aff=sbm

If you share that link with others, I get a commission for tickets sold, and this does help me out. Also, if you’re a WAN Poetry member, sit easy and know that it’s free.

Catalysts is back! We are doing Tuesdays instead of Thursdays at 6pm CST. Sign up is:  https://sarahbellummental.com/poeticworkshops/

And a workshop I’m excited about to offer is an Erotica Workshop, Touch The Poetic Pulse, Friday, February 11th, at 6:30pm CST. Sign up is: https://sarahbellummental.com/touch-poetic-pulse-workshop/

My books are still available if you’d like to take them home with you. Poetically word-wise, of course. Every bit helps, and I will do nice shit for you to send with your book and goodies. 

How I’m Doing Things In Poetry I’d Never Imagine Myself Doing

by sarahbellummental

You probably have seen this as my new flier at the top of the page. I took a dare and submitted myself to be a teacher in the upcoming WAN Academy. I remember the founder of Write About Now Poetry telling me that they needed a class on how I write so many poems in a day. I am currently at over 200 poems for the year of 2022.

Now, with this said, I do take days off writing. Sometimes, my brain isn’t cooperative. I’ve been writing more short stories and essays than I have done for years. Short story writing activates a different brain than poetry. All my start of lines and such get thrown out the window. I am making a story, talking in my head, doing it as if someone is right in front of me and I’m having a conversation with them.

It’s great, but if I do something like chapters for a Novel, or short stories, I lose my ability for poetry. It may still be there, but it’s less prevalent. I’m activating a different side, the conversations and story building I’m having while I’m on a walk versus an image of a flower becoming a metaphor for depression of how some flowers flourish in winter.

My brain likes connections. It connects everything in life. I am that person who bounces between twenty different things and to me they are all connected. While I’m flourishing with this, I might lose someone who it’s like hey, let’s keep this linear?

When I made this workshop I decided to share some of the things with how I can make three poems out of one. I never really thought I’d be teaching not just with my home base of WAN, but with Guerilla Poets which is a North Carolina non-profit organization that uses poetry and art to heal.

Everything I’ve done this year is because I’ve stopped saying is this good enough and I’ve told myself, yes, it is.

I’m also here to tell you that if you call yourself a writer, or a poet, then you are. There is no gatekeeping here. There is no amount of writing in a week that makes you become a writer or poet. I believe poetry is in us all. All we gotta do is access it and believe in our words to tell stories that our a part of our legacy. We need to never lose our ability to story tell. This is how my great grandma still lives in me is her amazing stories she’d tell me. I will never forget the joy she had telling them. I will never forget the everlasting love she had for her daughter, my grandma, in these stories.

And now I get to tell them in my language, my voice, to keep them living beyond me.

My Writing Process and Projects

by sarahbellummental

I get asked a lot about my writing process, and this question always makes me tilt my head. Process? 

The process sounds like tap, tap, tap at the keyboard while they smile at me. My process looks like banishing my inner critic. It looks like free writing, then Grammarly as my editing process, then reading out loud for hitches. My process looks like poetic possession.

What is the mental highway, you ask? That’s connecting to my inspiration. Sometimes, I’m not going to lie. She is difficult. She doesn’t want to work with me. When that happens, I use poetry prompts. You can use poetry prompts at all times you like to. I like to use the exact prompt three times and write three very different poems from one source of information. 

Some information on my workshops and projects: 

Talking about the Mental Highway, I do have a workshop with WAN Academy on June 6th doing just that. Writers, non-writers, poets, people who don’t call themselves poets but are pretty adept at words are all invited. To buy tickets for that is this link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/wan-academy-tapping-into-your-poetic-mental-highway-w-sarah-bellum-mental-tickets-254927183067?aff=sbm

If you share that link with others, I get a commission for tickets sold, and this does help me out. Also, if you’re a WAN Poetry member, sit easy and know that it’s free. 


Guerilla Poets Next Workshop, February 3rd, Self Compassion II

Also, I am a Guerilla Poet member, and I got free virtual workshops with them. My next one is in February 3rd, Thursday 6pm CST, and we will be doing Part II of Compassion Clarity and Poetic Craft. I am working on two workshops with them on Friday and Saturday for a safe space for survivors workshops. You can be a non-writer and just come to be in a group. You can write if you want, or write later if it comes to you. Sign up on their page to join us.

I have a Newsletter you can sign up for, Poetically Powered! Click here and it will be more in-depth information and a little behind the screen of things.

Trigger Finger Suicide

by sarahbellummental

JANUARY 6TH, 2021 POST

Topic For Today? Trigger Finger Suicide. What is the bullet on your tongue? What is the trigger you finger in your head?

Welcome to updates about me day by day! (ish) I never like to keep communication too consistent but since this is my author site, figure you guys getting a look in my brain is good?

I wrote a poem that unloaded some deep trauma I’ve never talked about.

It’s weird how it ticked 2021 and all this stuff wanted to get unloaded.

It’s called “Trigger Finger Suicide” so the title itself gives you a good idea of the mental space. Molestation, suicide survival, assault inside of it and some experiences I’m just starting to go back to and unload poetically.

One of the things I enjoy the most about poetry is I get to speak through metaphors real, life experiences that I’ve never shared. Then, people don’t ask me what happened. Because honestly? Lots of times I would shutdown if you asked me what spurred it. It’s in the poem and I don’t like to go into the details, the details are in the poem.

I live with trauma daily. Trying to pick apart living on eggshells being broken by my mere steps forward. So, that trauma can be accessed through poems but when I explain them it’s like I’ve already conquered the situations. But, I haven’t. Just because I’ve written something thousands of times doesn’t mean it gets smaller each time it’s written.

Sometimes, and most of the time, it gets bigger. And it looks like it might crush me by revisiting it. But, I know, if I can help with explaining it and my experiences, it’s worth it.