A Rocky Road to Loving Poetry by Tynea Lewis

I was in 7th grade when I was told by an English teacher that a poem I submitted for an assignment was not a poem.

I was crushed.

        Absolutely crushed.

I received a D on the assignment, a grade I had never seen before. As an A student, I was shocked, and a bit ticked off.

It was in that instant that I was turned off to poetry. I swore I would never write another stanza again. Poems felt pointless, and I created such a hatred for them in my mind.

Fast forward 17 years, and now I work for a poetry website.

Oh, the irony.

So what changed?

It wasn’t until the end of high school that I “opened my heart” to poetry again. It was my heart that drew me back to it. I’ve always been a writer, but it took some hard times for me to ultimately turn to poetry.

Eventually, I found this form to be the perfect way to capture the mess of emotions I felt as an older teenager. I could express my endless angst in short lines.

In my senior year of high school, I took a creative writing course, and half the semester was devoted to poetry. I was a little nervous about that at first, but I found such joy in exploring different forms. Poetry wasn’t just one thing. It wasn’t only about writing Shakespearean sonnets. It wasn’t about rhyming stanzas. It was a way to express myself.

I have now written just over 600 poems. How many would that 7th grade English teacher consider poems? Probably only a fraction, but that’s okay because I’ve enjoyed exploring this form.

My advice for people who approach poetry the way my twelve-year-old self did?

Don’t get hung up on the “rules” of poetry. Allow it to be a reflection of your heart, and you’ll come to love it as well.

It’s not as scary as we were taught in school. When we see that and share a love of poetry with our students, they won’t be fearful of it either.

Sometimes you need to walk away from something for a little while in order to fall in love with it.



Tynea Lewis is a former Title I teacher from Pennsylvania. She was named a 30 Under 30 honoree by the International Literacy Association in 2016 for her work with LitPick Student Book Reviews, an online reading and writing program. When she’s not busy overseeing the program or working for Family Friend Poems, she loves to spend time with her husband and young daughters, write for a variety of audiences, and escape to the quietness of the mountains. You can connect with her on Twitter and Instagram at @TyneaLewis or on her blog at tynealewis.com.