Casual Conversation

A little bit, yeah. I think it's actually really common, for a variety of reasons. Some people just do it as a time-filler, or a self-reflection exercise, or just for pure creative pleasure. They may feel no need to share it at all, or may want to share it but aren't sure how.

I'd say if you're in the latter camp, most places I've been have at least a small literary scene, with open readings, zine exchanges, or even small publishers. If you want to, you can go out and meet the other weirdos sharing their stuff, and I think there's value in doing so in meatspace.

But if you want to write poems purely for the pleasure of the activity, or whatever other personal purpose, that's 100% valid. There are worse ways to fill time.

Yes. I post some on internet or zine but that's all. But poetry isn't necessarily complicated. It can but doesn't have to.

You don’t have to publish it in order to make it worthwhile, writing poetry for its own sake is perfectly valid. Not even the most prolific writers in history ever published everything they wrote.

There once was a poet at home

Who’d not write a verse of his own

No poem was made

So none was displayed

Unwritten, unpublished, unknown

Yeah. Not a ton, but yeah. I havr a number of poems chillin' in my notes and if i ever feel like they're 'finished' I'll post them somewhere.

I posted one to lemmy a while back.

It's perfectly okay to write things just for yourself. Healthier than average behavior I would even argue

I've written countless songs. Recorded some with my band back years ago but never published. I've toyed with the idea of submitting the lyrics for fair use somehow but never got around to it.

Some people write novels and epics to never be seen. Some people build castles that only they will ever step foot in.

The urge to monetize or publicize everything is toxic, i think. I spend a lot of time writing or doing ttrpg design because i enjoy the activity.

Never is a long word, but I have a bunch of poems and short stories and other errata that I think seems unlikely to ever see the light of publication. I have submitted poems to journals and other publications (never successfully published though), but the vast majority of my writing is compost that I'll turn over every few months and see if I want to revisit it. Occasionally I'll tweak things here and there or, more likely, reading an old thing will inspire a new thing that gets added to the pile. Maybe I'll get something published someday. Maybe I'll be a modern Emily Dickinson and get famous posthumously. Or maybe, like most poets, I'll fade unremarkably and unremarked-upon into the wash of history. I'm content with any of these outcomes.

Yes. Some of it I've put online or submitted to journals, but most is just for me and my loved ones.

Well, yeah. Getting poetry published in the first place is an uphill battle, even compared to prose publishing. It's been a long time since poetry was core to pop culture, despite the occasional surges. Which means there's no money in it unless you somehow manage to have the right connections and a lot of luck.

That, in turn, disincentivizes writers from after actively working on poetry. It becomes a much more casual thing, which means that the craft of it rarely gets honed the way other branches of writing do.

There's less written, in part because there's less read, which leads to lower quality work, which decreases interest, which decreases cash flow, which means less gets written. It's a spiral.

Poetry as a hobby is viable. Poetry as anything to try and get others to read is much less so.

Hell, i don't think I've written a serious poem in a decade. Some occasional lines will pop in my head, I jot them down, but they never connect or spark a continuance. I do the occasional bit of drivel, or a rhymed joke. Even a jokey song once, but even if I was cranking them out like I did as a teenager, I wouldn't even bother posting them on lemmy, much less a more poetry-centric place

Poetry, music, entire books, video games...

I'm really good at starting shit; terrible at finishing shit.

I think that's fine.

I write books when I feel a need to do something creative, I've never published any of them. Its simply a means to exercise creativity.

Honestly sounds like a cool hobby to have. You don't need to publish it to make it worthwhile like others have said, but that said, there's no harm in throwing it out there somewhere on the internet.

Maybe we should even have a dedicated community for sharing these sorts of things, hobbyists and dilletantes sharing what they make and giving each other constructive feedback or just discussing it, without influencers/promoters/businesses and the lack of an online following being a requirement, and also without it being seen as advertising/promoting/shilling.

The whole thing framed as a sort of variety showcase, where sharing is a bit more personal and the person sharing can give some information about who they are and what they do and maybe make friends or meet like-minded people along the way, a community where just about anything goes from a table to a poem as long as the poster made it themselves and they aren't promoting, and the lurkers in such a community would get a diverse feed of all sorts of things they probably never would have interacted with otherwise, with maybe even some diamonds in the rough.

I’ve wrote some poems, usually in English, and just shared them out with my friends but not much beyond that.

I think they’re good, I just have trouble approaching the spotlight, even though I want my work to be seen.

I paint and sketch and do not want people to ever look at them. I assume poetry can be the same.

Nothing wrong with doing things for only your own enjoyment.

You don’t have to try to measure up to others, or have to be great, or sell your hobbies as a side hustle. They’ve always been got enjoyment first.

I used to, a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away. I did get a couple of unpaid publishings, and did some self publishing of other people. I'm not sure I could pull it off anymore.