Who is The Accidental Poet?

Why do I call myself "The Accidental Poet"?

On February 28, 2022, PTSD won. For ten days, my intense feelings were locked up in my head as I was unable to put them into words. I felt like I was falling, falling, falling into a deep, dark well.

Always a writer, never a poet, on the tenth day, a poem suddenly broke my silence, spilling out word after word, line after line, without hesitation onto a blank Microsoft Word page. Thirty minutes later, it was finished. A long poem. Unedited. Unthinking. All feeling. And it was actually... good.

A pressure valve was released. It felt so good. Cathartic. Raw, Real.

As good as this experience was, I thought for sure it was a one-off. I'm not a poet! But... man plans, God laughs. And he had a good one on me. The poetry kept coming. And coming, and coming. Sometimes four or five in a single day.

I felt that God gave me a new tool to express myself, at first, and later to write about universal human truths and experiences: the good, the bad, the funny, the beautiful. Whatever seed he planted in my mind on a given day.

Two years later, I had over 400 poems on a variety of topics. Not all of them are masterpieces -- actually probably none of them are masterpieces -- but they are genuine, original, and in a style all my own which I have continued to adapt and refine.

I never sit down with the intention to write a poem. I never start with a prompt. I might be making my coffee and a though comes into my head about something. Or, most often, I'm hiking trails under the trees with my dog, Sugar, when I just get a thought or maybe two words or a single line that pops into my head, and it goes from there.

Always a writer. Never a poet. Until March 10, 2022. On Feb. 28th,

PTSD won the day, but God equipped me and we won the battle. Every day is another win.

Kim Skimmons

The Accidental Poet