Today I wanted to bring up the subject of Solitude as a prompt for poetry.

Solitude to me is the positive aspect of loneliness where you teach yourself to be comfortable in the company of yourself. Solitude to me is a tool to handle loneliness. To see yourself.

In today’s situation of social distancing, we all have taken a crash course in loneliness, and when learning to cope. Today I would like you to write about your own experience with how you find strength in solitude or how you still struggle with loneliness.

I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.
David Henry Thoreau

This is the time when we try to learn from Henry David Thoreau and his ideas of constructive solitude expressed in his experiment and book about building a cabin at Walden Pond. I have yet to read it, but you don’t have to go far to find experts trying to draw conclusions on how we can use self-isolation to self-improvements.

For many poets, solitude is even a prerequisite for creation, and lacking loneliness we often have to find solitude by for instance walking or meditation.

The prompt today is simple, just start from the word solitude and write about it. Try to avoid using the word solitude, but try instead to describe how it feels. Does it even have a scent or a sound?

When you have written your poem, link it up below, and try to read and comment as usual.

Have fun and smile