Returning to my poetry roots

When I competed on the forensics team in junior high, high school and college, I cornered the market on poetry. I interped poetry for ten years. While in college I sprawled out to several other events, I always stayed with poetry because it was my comfort zone.

My final prelim round at AFA Nationals in...hell...Arizona? I can't even remember...anyway, that final prelim round was the last time I uttered a word of poetry out loud. I overdosed on poetry.
Lately, though, I've been thinking that a poetry class might be just what I need to push my fiction in a different direction. So, I signed up for Jude Nutter's class at the loft for this summer. I also signed up for a novel workshop. This will be the first summer in several years that I haven't taken a fiction class. I know I'll miss it, but I'm happy to be returning to the written word that I first fell in love with, even before I wrote stories I wrote poetry like a fiend, and to see how it affects my writing.