Hey y’all!

It’s the final day of National Poetry Writing Month. I’m so grateful to have been featured on their website for the poem I wrote yesterday! I’m also grateful that I had the fortitude to complete this challenge while undergoing chemotherapy. God is good!

The writing prompt for Day 30 is to write a palinode – a poem in which you retract a view or sentiment expressed in an earlier poem. For example, you might pick a poem you drafted earlier in the month and write a poem that contradicts or troubles it. This could be an interesting way to start working on a series of related poems. Alternatively, you could play around with the idea of a palinode by writing a poem in which the speaker says something like “I take it back” or otherwise abandons a prior position within the single poem.

Here is my poem:

RETRACTION RE: SAD POETRY

By Farah Lawal Harris, © 2023

I retract my previous statement

regarding sad poems.

The moratorium on sadness expressed

in couplets and rhyme

has reached the end of its time.

I will commence to write about

days I’m depressed,

the ones when life feels like it’s raining

and I’m wearing sunglasses,

days when the only thing that saved me from the end

was my pen.

Sad poetry can be a friend,

and it was a dear one of mine.

I survived trauma and through divine intervention,

a professor suggested

I write every single day.

I followed her advice and poetry flowed through me

in diary entries.

I shared the poems publicly

and realized that in my pain,

I wasn’t alone.

Words became my home—

the key unlocked through sad poems.

There is room for all moods in this house now.

I’m grateful for a place to let it all out.