12 steps to writing homeless trauma poetry

Writing a character in a novel is a mystery to me. But a poem? A character in a poem has no deus ex machina in the last line. The poet is left at the end of a poem with an ambitious question: Was it worth it? The line structure, the meter, the cadence of thought, the placement of words on a page. These all are the fundamental steps that build character. The complexity of conflict is also supposed to build character. That. That idea. That is the discrepancy. A personal theory: Homlessness’s complexity does not build character. Lydia Theon Ware i has published poetry in “MUSE,” the Riverside City College literary magazine. Her other works include “Awe: Love Letters to the Most High” and “17 Letters for Jesus and Me: Love Letters to the Most High.” (Courtesy of Lydia Theon Ware i) There is no healing from homelessness. There are scars, but the wounds are fresh yearly. Homelessness is not a character builder, it is an assault: not a face slap or a punch in the gut, but an assault to the inner child’s last sense of protection. Homelessness builds life-long trauma. The symptoms of trauma vary from person to person. There is no recovery from homelessness. There is housing, but the tiny-seed spirit of hope has been permanently altered. Cells have shifted. Faces and souls have morphed into a cortisol-induced structure burning with uncertainty […]

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