The Body Poem Project: Three Months of Poems

This was a fun writing project: Every day for five minutes I wrote about how my body was feeling. I meant for it to be a 365 project, so, every day for a year. In the morning, I did a body scan from head to toe. I felt where I was in space and put myself in place and wrote about it.

It was interesting at first, but also there was a lot of sameness. I start the day in the same room, in the same posture. Then, I found I focused on my complaints. This ache and that. Over and over again. I wrote: This is my body filled with betrayal.

I challenged myself to try to write "The Body Project" in different locations. I did this some. A different room in the house. On the stairs. Outside. But the pandemic hit and I didn't do to any new locations, so always at home. 

Six months through, I decided I'd had enough and accomplished whatever I had wanted to get from this project. But then I thought, why not turn these writing prompts into poetry? There was sameness, but also a few nuggets. 

I wrote: Decided to make this a six month project and tomorrow we write poems. Hurrah! How will this become poetry I wonder?

I started to do this not expecting to write a poem every day or to turn every prompt into a poem. But I found the words flowed. I wrote a poem every day for three months using the prompts as a starting place, but also whatever words, images, or dreams were with me at the start of the day. Sometimes, I used multiple days of prompts for one poem. Sometimes one prompt led to more than one poem.

Caveat: I turn to poetry when I feel more emotion than story. When I feel strongly. And this, in this pandemic, is what I've come up with. For the purposes of journaling. For the purposes of living and feeling. It makes me feel free to share to say: I am not, especially, a poet.