In honor of me turning 30, I’m compiling 30 different top-30 lists on a wide variety of topics ranging from trivial interests of mine to meaningful life moments. Read the introductory post for more background information on my 30 at 30 project. Reminder: there is no scientific rationale for these lists. They were composed by a panel of one—me.

I graduated from Mercyhurst College (now Mercyhurst University) in 2007 with a BA in English and a dual concentration in writing and creative writing. I know that sounds redundant, but “writing” meant professional writing/business writing/nonfiction whereas “creative writing” meant poetry and fiction writing. In the time since I graduated, I have done well exercising the “writing” portion of my degree. Working as a temp at Erie Insurance, a copywriter for Tungsten Creative Group, a graduate student in the secondary education program at Mercyhurst, and a blogger for Blog Talk BayHawk and D-League Digest—not to mention the occasional freelance project, I have remained consistently active in some way or another as a writer.

However, I have fallen short in my post-graduate years in the realm of creative writing. My Senior English Project at Mercyhurst was a poetry portfolio consisting of 20 poems. As I wrote as part of my academic preface:

…I hope to accomplish a few objectives in my poetry. Through a combination of persona poems and self-portrait poems, I intend to depict a complex depiction of myself (Matt). By speaking about Matt from various perspectives, including that of family, friends, impersonal observers, and myself, I plan to complicate and fragment the notion of a unified self. As one progresses through the compilation, one experiences a variety of opinions, viewpoints, snippets, segments, stories and thoughts, but has no definitive way of knowing the truth. Which speakers are reliable? Are any of the speakers reliable? Going on the assumption that at least some of the information presented in the poems is truthful, how does a reader construct an image of Matt based upon that information?

While the unknown answers to these questions help to complicate any concrete understanding of self, they also lead to the reader to draw conclusions. While they may be incapable of painting a definitive picture, certain themes and motifs resurface in multiple poems allowing the reader to attribute certain qualities and characteristics to Matt. Therefore, the ultimate goal of my poetry is not for the reader to find out the answer to the age-old question: Who am I? Instead, the compilation of poetry functions in a way that urges the reader to render a version of myself in their mind. Since no two readers’ minds are the same, each is likely to form a slightly different final product from his or her perceptions. Thus, the title rings true as this compilation of poetry creates Renditions of My Self.

The persona and self-portrait poems that made up Renditions of My Self were written more than eight years ago. When I began compiling this list of my favorite poems that I have written, I had two surprising realizations. First, I was impressed to realize that I have written and saved nearly 200 poems dating back to my senior year of high school. I am sure there are dozens more that were lost over the years. The second thing I realized was that since that Senior English Project I have written less than 10 poems on record.

It is understandable that I would not write at the same prolific rate that I did in high school and college when the muses of love and dating and teenage angst produced some stereotypically bad teenage lines of poetry. Still, writing less than a poem per year is disappointing to say the least, especially since I think my more recent efforts—rare as they may be—show a more mature, developed use of language.

Having said that, there are a lot of gems that I found while reading through my old poetry archives. My hope is that this act of re-reading and sharing some of my past work will also inspire me to exercise my creative writing poetry muscles more as I progress in my 30s. Continue reading 30 at 30 List #16: Poetry I’ve Written →