Valley Stream poet strikes when the inspiration is hot

The spotlight shines extremely bright on Megan Falley, a local poet who has been using her talent with words for a long time. The 22-year-old Valley Stream resident says her passion runs very deep not only for creative writing, but for sharing her work with others.

“I suppose what I love about being on stage is something visceral, and probably reveals a lot more about me than I am necessarily willing to admit,” she said. “When you’re on stage, it’s mandated that people pay attention to you, that they really listen.”

Her journey has been one full of exploration and discovery, starting in elementary school. She began writing poems for special holidays and events, including ghost-writing for her friends’ bat mitzvahs. “Writing was always what I did,” she said, “but I resented it and avoided it due to my mad and unyielding desire to be on stage rather than behind a book.”

She further explained her “love affair” with poetry. “Explaining why I am interested in poetry is really an exploration of why a brain works the way it does,” Falley said. “I suppose at the most basic level, my mind is most aroused when I hear something compared well to something else, in a way I had never thought of before.”

After graduating from Valley Stream South High School in 2006, she reached new poetic heights while attending SUNY New Paltz. It was there that she began to explore “spoken word” — incorporating poetry with performance. But the self-professed “slam poet” said it has re-energized her poetry. She now writes a lot of performance poems, but takes precautions in making sure that a stage poem is also enjoyable on the page. And she is always changing her style — switching from an early focus on rhyming, to finding importance in images, metaphors and meaning.

“I’m hesitant to pigeon-hole myself and declare what ‘type’ of poetry I write,” she said. Falley chooses to use as few words as possible to tell a story, and edits her work several times. Perhaps what also stands out is her desire to tackle a diverse range of subjects.

And whenever inspiration hits, she listens. “There are times when inspiration shows up in the middle of the night, tugging on my pant leg until I wake up and entertain her, and she has kept me up writing poems until I hear the birds chirp in the morning,” Falley said. “And I know that if I ignore inspiration, then she will get very upset and in protest not come around again for a while.”

Sometimes, she refuses to wait for inspiration — and works her “writing muscle.” She competes in New York City almost every week, and is currently participating in “30/30” – writing 30 poems in 30 days for National Poetry Month. She plans to complete the challenge, and will soon be able to add that accomplishment on to an already long list that includes published works in literary magazines and a spot in the National Poetry Slam last August.

But in the meantime, she is focused on her work of inspiration. “It is very important to write what you know,” she said, “and then it is important to explore, to write what terrifies you, to enter the abyss.”