I have writ­ten poet­ry since I was about eleven. I still have a few of those poems. One was about being in class, watch­ing the clock and want­i­ng to go home, anoth­er was about my best friend as I watched her walk­ing out­side my win­dow, one was about a boy, one about my lit­tle sis­ter, one about death, and one was full of sil­ly non­sense. None of these were good poems. And it didn’t mat­ter. Writ­ing them made me hap­py. It became a hob­by. I wrote on tablets, on note­book paper, in diaries, and on the backs of used busi­ness papers my dad brought home from the office. At one point my grand­fa­ther gave me his old type­writer and I fell even deep­er into the world of words along with the sound of click clack­ing while I typed. (I hadn’t learned to type yet, I just punched one key at a time.) I had things I want­ed to say, and so I said them. Word after word, and line after line. Some poems rhymed and some did not. I don’t remem­ber wor­ry­ing about ideas, or how to get an idea, I just wrote what I was feel­ing, see­ing, and thinking.

Now that I am a grown-up writer, I’m asked quite a bit where I get my ideas for poems. The truth is, not much has changed, except I enjoy study­ing the craft of poet­ry, com­par­ing one thing to anoth­er, tak­ing time to notice, to observe all the details that I can, choos­ing words, mak­ing word lists, find­ing the just-right word. And I usu­al­ly begin by prais­ing some­thing. But before I can praise it, I fall in love with it for just a moment. And even before that, I ques­tion it, feel amazed by it, mar­vel at it. This might be wind­shield wipers slosh­ing back and forth, hold­ing a cold, glassy mar­ble in my hand, watch­ing the whirling spokes of a bicy­cle, look­ing at a starfish, a shad­ow, the heart shaped rock, a pen­ny on the side­walk, a kite caught in a tree, a tiny frog or a clus­ter of clouds.

Poems don’t have to be about big, com­pli­cat­ed things. But they can be. I’ve writ­ten about a friend mov­ing away, miss­ing my grand­fa­ther, and being lonely.