In Defense of Writing Bad Poetry and Pursuing Other Creative Outlets

Paige J.
4 min readAug 27, 2022
Photo by Álvaro Serrano on Unsplash

I’ve written a lot of bad poetry recently — haikus, to be more specific. And even though these haikus may never see the light of day on Medium or elsewhere, I will staunchly defend writing bad poetry and pursuing other creative outlets (badly or otherwise) because I need to do it. And you do, too.

As human beings, we have the unique ability to create art and express ourselves through countless ways. So many times, however, we’re held back from writing, composing music, painting or other creative pursuits even though it’s what we want to do — what we, at times, feel compelled to do. What’s stopping us?

Here are some reasons that are preventing us from creating art:

  • Time
  • Lacking inspiration (stuck in a creative rut)
  • Paralyzed by failure
  • Lacking motivation
  • Lacking discipline
  • Easily distracted
  • Procrastination

I’ve experienced every one of these and more. Before writing my bad poetry, I kept thinking of writing. I wanted to write haikus in particular because they are such a short form of poetry that it would be easier to write than poems in say, iambic pentameter. I also haven’t written a lot of haikus and…

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Paige J.

Posts for the post-pandemic (and during the pandemic).