Zahra Gordon

I sometimes get over stimulated and have a million ideas and thoughts running through my head all at the same time. I’m constantly experiencing things and reading articles that I want to respond to and blog about. And then time runs out on me. It seems like I never have enough time to do ALL the things I want to and pursue of ALL of the happiness.I also don’t want to half-ass responses or posts. I want to write things that are somewhat meaningful and researched. This can be time-consuming though. 

One of the things that I’ve felt like I’ve had less and less time for in recent months is poetry. Although, last month I made a HUGE effort to get The Word back into my life (and I did a good amount of reading and writing), I am trying to find new ways to push myself and keep that constant flow of creative writing going. Poetry is my life’s work so I can’t NOT have time for life.

When I participated in the youth literary arts program, Arts on the Block, one of the exercises poet Lisa Pegram assigned us involved writing a poem based on a newspaper article. The title of the poem would be the headline. On my way to work, I was thinking about a portfolio of poetry I’ve been working on, and about adding a haiku to the work when I submit and then I remembered Ms. Lisa’s exercise. Earlier this year, I started doing daily haiku just to sharpen my skills but I thought that sharing haiku on my blog was also a good idea. And then, Haiku from the Headlines was born. 

I’ve been hesitant to post poetry on my blog because I wanted to focus on getting them published in journals and anthologies. I’m still working towards that goal, but I’m also understanding that there is more than enough poetry to share with potential publishers and on my blog. 

Today’s post will be the first in a weekly series updated on Fridays. I’ll take a headline from an article and write a haiku about the information/situation and share it here. Check out the first installment below!