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Unwritten, unpublished, unknown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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Poetry, music, entire books, video games…

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

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I’m usually motivated by very personal experiences, that I would only really want to share with at most one other person, i.e. the person I had that experience with. I’ve tried sharing poems anonymously before, and as such also keeping the text quite abstract, but that just makes it feel hollow and obtuse…