I started writing poetry at 30 years old, not long after I moved to London UK in early 2018. The city I fell in love with, the city of my heart, my initial inspiration, a city, a country that became a place I want to settle and stay in forever. I suppose I had a little Poet in me since I was born as my mom recently sent me a poem I wrote in French when I was 7 years old, something that didn’t mean anything special but it did rhyme after all. As a teenager, growing up in a small village in East Canada,  just after I learned to speak and write in English at 12 years old, I started writing songs in English, very tacky and cheesy words, nothing very good really. Thus, I guess I could say, I always had a light and subconscious love for writing in me. 

Since, I started writing Poetry, I found myself writing everywhere I go, walking from work to the Poetry Café in London, on the train journey to somewhere, on holiday in another country, in my room, by the sea. Everywhere, whenever inspiration comes along. Writing poetry is my freedom, my passion; I can pour my heart out, drain the tears of happy and sad and it gives me the chance to understand the world and to write about this beautiful insanity and sweetness we live in. 

In poetry, you find the life stories of each of us and as a reader, you interpret each poem in your own way, despite the real meaning behind the poem or regardless of the reasons why the writer wrote it. The beauty of poems is that you can let your own imagination flow and let the poem understand your mind, you create your own definition about the words you’ve always known and you give them a new meaning. Without you even knowing, the way you reflect each poem differently can help you understand yourself.

Poetry; The art of living through someone else or a way of laying your raw soul in your open hands as a writer. Through poetry, we understand each other better as human beings and we connect with people through writing. It’s another language, it’s one of the best way for me to talk to you. It’s the intensity of our feelings, it’s a deeper way to explain how we feel, regardless if what we sometimes feel is anger, pain, trouble, loneliness, happiness, love and everything else we have felt at a certain time, on a certain day. Hence, its thousands burst of mixed emotions in the same tiny room, looking to stay or escape all at once. 

Poems I write comes naturally.  In my poetry, you may find or feel your soul fall between your fingers like grains of sand or your inner happy and sweet float on top of your head. Poems are the bare naked soul of each writer, it’s me opening up to the world as a Poet and it’s us healing or smiling together through each line. Poems are the medicine of our broken soul, they are our happy, our dreams, our nightmares and everything we feel in between. Through my poems, you will see the compassionate person I am, I want you to know that it’s okay to have felt broken, that you are not the only one who made mistakes, I want to try and understand your pain, your biggest happiness, I want to know what is your life ecstasy. For me, it’s writing poetry. 

A couple of my poems will feature in a book called We Are All Somebody, this will get published at the end of 2019. Also watch out for my first chapbook collection coming out in 2020 called Bittersweet, published by the Hedgehog Poetry Press. Contemporary poetry with open verse, a selection of poems I’ve written about different topics such as, motherhood, love, relationships, mental health, lost, life success, life problems and many more. 

Which poem can you relate to the most?

I hope you’ll enjoy reading me as much as I love writing.

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Francoise Chouinard is a winner of the White Label Prize from The Hedgehog Poetry press. Her first chapbook will be released in March of 2020.

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