Before I ever thought about writing a book, before I understood story structure or character arcs or themes, I knew poetry. Poetry was my first language — the place where my emotions learned how to speak. Long before I had the courage to tell my story out loud, poetry gave me a way to whisper it onto the page.

I’ve been writing poems for as long as I can remember.
On scraps of paper.
In the margins of notebooks.
On the backs of receipts.
Anywhere a thought or a feeling needed somewhere to land.

Poetry taught me how to listen to myself.
How to sit with an emotion long enough to understand it.
How to name things I didn’t yet have the vocabulary for.

It shaped my voice by teaching me that writing doesn’t have to be loud to be powerful. It can be soft. It can be subtle. It can be a single line that hits harder than a whole chapter. Poetry taught me that truth doesn’t need permission — it just needs space.

When I write fiction now, I still feel the poet in me guiding the way.
She shows up in the rhythm of my sentences.
In the way I linger on emotion.
In the way I let silence speak.
In the way I choose words not just for meaning, but for music.

Poetry taught me to write from the inside out — to start with the feeling, the heartbeat, the ache, the longing. It taught me that every story has an emotional pulse, and if I can find that pulse, I can find the truth of the character.

Even when I’m writing about heartbreak, identity, rebuilding, or survival, poetry is there.
In the cadence.
In the imagery.
In the breath between lines.

And I know that one day, poetry will weave itself directly into my books — not just in tone, but in form. A poem tucked into a chapter. A character who speaks in verse. A moment that can only be captured through the sharp, distilled honesty that poetry offers.

Poetry shaped my voice by teaching me to honor emotion.
To trust intuition.
To write with vulnerability instead of fear.
To let language be both delicate and fierce.

It made me the writer I am now — the one who writes for the people who feel deeply, who love deeply, who hurt deeply, who are trying to find themselves in a world that keeps trying to define them.

Poetry gave me my voice.
And now, through my stories, I’m giving that voice back to the world.

— Leigh C. Mitchell