Do you believe you have an inner poet who wants to share their poetry with the world? If the answer is yes, we have some fundamental tips for you to help you start writing poetry.
Without further ado – let us begin!
Become a Poetry Reader
If you want to be good at something, you will want to understand it inside out. And the best way to do that is by start reading poetry. If you want to get better at writing poetry – or – start writing poetry, the best thing you can do is start reading poetry.
By doing so, you will get inspired. Also, the poems that you will read will further help you understand the literary elements and all the other basic concepts of writing a poem. Nonetheless, when you are reading poetry, you are not simply reading through it.
You will find that poetry is a form of very detailed expressive art – sometimes – it only implies potential meanings that you have to figure out, which makes it so much more interesting and fun to read and experience.
You can think about reading poetry to analyze an important painting piece. Nonetheless, you get the point – if you want to become a good poet, you will want to become an avid reader of poetry first.
Keep the Poem Short-Writing Poetry
Instead of venturing out to write an epic, you will want to keep your writing short initially. You might want to think about the poem in terms of a painting. If you were a painter, you wouldn’t start off by painting a gigantic scene of Venice on a huge canvas.
Initially, you will start your painting journey with sketches and work on smaller projects. Your painting projects will expand based on your skills and confidence. The potential downside of painting on a huge canvas (initially) is that all your flaws will be more visible – and as a beginner of any skill, you are prone to make mistakes – even as a writer.
Also, by working on a larger project, you will take longer to finish the project, which perfectly explains why newbie beginners rarely get to finish their work, which is mainly because they have started big and simply lost their passion before completing their projects.
Now, assuming that you don’t want to become one of those artists who never get to complete their projects, you will want to start small and then work your way up to the bigger canvas.
So, you will want to keep the poem short initially by hyper-focusing on one image or emotion. Choose one emotion and start from there by seeing what images stand out to you. Check out what a poetry book layout looks like to get an idea about the images that poets use to evoke an emotion.
You might as well take an image, see what emotions you could evoke, and explore that image.
Focus on One Central Image while writing poetry
As a beginner poet, you will want to focus on one central image. Or, you should focus on one emotion throughout your poem. As a beginner poet, you might struggle with many ideas, and naturally, you will want everything on the page.
There is nothing wrong with getting everything out – but – you will have to filter things out later and assess what goes into the poem and what has to go. This aspect is particularly important if you want to avoid poems that are about nothing in particular.
You might have encountered such poems before where the poet started talking about the weather before incorporating a girl and ending the poem with death.
Ideally, your reader shouldn’t feel confused about what they just read in your poem. With that said, there is nothing wrong with writing all your ideas down for your first draft – but – you will want to omit things and parts that are ambiguous later during the editing session.
Your poetic piece should allow the reader to visualize a central theme that the poem is about, so your poetry should be about concentrated images and emotions unless you are writing a long epic poem, such as Milton’s Paradise Lost.
You get the point – as a newbie poet, you will want to focus on a central theme/ emotion instead of trying to cover a wide range of images and emotions, as to do so requires an advanced set of skills – something that you might lack in the beginning.
We recommend taking it one step at a time and spreading the ideas and themes as you gather skills and expertise on your way.
Leave Something for the Reader
Another tip for writing better poetry that your readers will actually like is to leave some room for the readers.
When it comes to poetry – you will want to say less because less is more. Understandably, you will feel tempted to say everything in your mind and explain all aspects of your chosen subject in your poem.
However, you will need to realize that you will never be able to explain everything in poetry. Now the thing about language and the magical use of language, in particular, is that it essentially points in the direction of the things that it refers to.
You will never be able to capture the things as they are in your writing. So, you will want to change your approach to poetry – instead of using it as a medium to say everything on your mind, you will want to use it in terms of what is not said and left for the readers to contemplate.
So, poetry comprises not – the things that are said and that are not said. Ultimately, it comes down to how the words appear to each reader based on their perception and personal experience.
As you continue to write poetry, you will find your preferred balance between how much you want to say and how much you want to exclude – leaving some space for the readers to think about and come up with their own interpretation and analysis.
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