Guest Blogger Erika D. is a former First Book Fellow.

After leaving First Book last July, I packed up and moved to Boston to pursue a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry at Emerson College. Since April is National Poetry Month, I thought I’d share a little about this journey and what poetry has meant to me.

Throughout my first year at Emerson, students and faculty have talked a great deal about what poetry is, why we write, and why this pursuit of writing is an honorable one. I’ve read theories of poetics by everyone from Plato to Wallace Stevens, and many have different ideas about what poetry should be, but have the same need to explain why it is they feel called to write.

We write because we’re bored, because we see something that inspires us, because our imaginations run wild, because we are upset, because for a split second we remember what it feels like to be a kid.

What I have learned this year is that the answer to that question is different for all writers, but the pursuit of that answer is what unites us.

For me, Elizabeth Bishop touches most closely on the reason we write in her poem, “One Art”.

Wherever your own journeys in writing or in reading may take you, remember this month that we are all joined together by this passion for words. The ability to take yourself to new worlds lies merely in a blank sheet of paper and a pen.