Poetry,simple,how to write
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
NOTE : Though this article contains some advice on how to write poems ,it is by no means intended to show "how to become a poet",
even less "how to become a GOOD poet".Neither does it cover EVERY aspect of writing poetry.It is intended to help people who HAVE to write poetry - for class or to impress somone maybe.
The results will probably not be "great art",but o.k. for people who otherwise would have been completely lost.
HOW TO WRITE SIMPLE POETRY IN 5 EASY STEPS
1. Try and think of some personal expirience - anything which moved you,made you angry,seemed funny to you lately.
2. What were the circumstances of that expirience like ? Where were you ? Was anybody with you ? What did the things surrounding you(furniture,buildings,trees,objects in the landscape)look like ? Try to think of as many details as possible.
3. In what way did all these circumstance contribute to the expirience? Were your feelings influenced by them ?
4.Now try and imagine you had to tell someone about that expirience,
and you wanted to make the situation and the circumstances as clear as possible to him - making him feel exactly the way you felt at best.
It might be a good idea to leave out some of the deatails you´ve collected so far.Pick the ones which deem you most important.
For example : A few days ago ,you tried to call a friend on the phone.
You wanted to speak to him very badly ,cause something important had happened in you life you just needed to talk about,and then he didn´t answer the phone,which made you feel disappointed and also quite helpless ,cause you didn´t know how to deal with what happened to you alone.
If you wanted to write a poem about that expirience,it might be a good idea to put an emphasis on how your feelings changed in the progress of events - from excitement about what happend to you and aspiration to talk to your friend to disappointment and lonelyness.
You might also add some of details illustrating your feelings : the way the "line busy" sign kept ringing in your ears ,how silent your apartment was etc.
Which details are important and which are not remains for you to judge- the exact date might seem unimportant to some ,others might find it important that it was a 13th ,a day of bad luck etc.
Finding the ones to contribute to the overall impression you want to convey to the reader is one of the most difficult parts of composing a poem.
5.Try to put everything you want to say into a fitting form.
As there are hundreds and thousands of poetical forms ,it might help to know at least some ,but even if you´ve never read a poem before,
you can try to arrange the words on the page in a way which contributes to the overall impression of the poem and leads the reader in a certain direction.
EXAMPLE:
Let´s imagine what you had already looked like this:
"I tried to call a friend to tell him about something important ,but all I heard in my silent appartment was the line-busy sign"
A very simple way of "forming" these words would be just to arrange them on the page ,like this :
I
tried to call
a friend
to tell him about
something important
but
all
I heard
in
my silent apartment was
the line-busy sign
No great poetry either,of course ,but still better in some ways than what you´ve started with.Note how the breaks and the free spaces on the page add to the meaning of the poem:"tried to call" is standing betwen "I" and "a friend" - is dividing the two;"all" is set apart from the lines before and after to make it look lost on the page ,to show how little you really heard and how "white" (quiet) everything around you was.
Experiment on your own a little ,and what you´ll get following these instructions will certainly not win you prizes or even have a chance to be published ,but will very well serve the aforementioned purposes.
even less "how to become a GOOD poet".Neither does it cover EVERY aspect of writing poetry.It is intended to help people who HAVE to write poetry - for class or to impress somone maybe.
The results will probably not be "great art",but o.k. for people who otherwise would have been completely lost.
HOW TO WRITE SIMPLE POETRY IN 5 EASY STEPS
1. Try and think of some personal expirience - anything which moved you,made you angry,seemed funny to you lately.
2. What were the circumstances of that expirience like ? Where were you ? Was anybody with you ? What did the things surrounding you(furniture,buildings,trees,objects in the landscape)look like ? Try to think of as many details as possible.
3. In what way did all these circumstance contribute to the expirience? Were your feelings influenced by them ?
4.Now try and imagine you had to tell someone about that expirience,
and you wanted to make the situation and the circumstances as clear as possible to him - making him feel exactly the way you felt at best.
It might be a good idea to leave out some of the deatails you´ve collected so far.Pick the ones which deem you most important.
For example : A few days ago ,you tried to call a friend on the phone.
You wanted to speak to him very badly ,cause something important had happened in you life you just needed to talk about,and then he didn´t answer the phone,which made you feel disappointed and also quite helpless ,cause you didn´t know how to deal with what happened to you alone.
If you wanted to write a poem about that expirience,it might be a good idea to put an emphasis on how your feelings changed in the progress of events - from excitement about what happend to you and aspiration to talk to your friend to disappointment and lonelyness.
You might also add some of details illustrating your feelings : the way the "line busy" sign kept ringing in your ears ,how silent your apartment was etc.
Which details are important and which are not remains for you to judge- the exact date might seem unimportant to some ,others might find it important that it was a 13th ,a day of bad luck etc.
Finding the ones to contribute to the overall impression you want to convey to the reader is one of the most difficult parts of composing a poem.
5.Try to put everything you want to say into a fitting form.
As there are hundreds and thousands of poetical forms ,it might help to know at least some ,but even if you´ve never read a poem before,
you can try to arrange the words on the page in a way which contributes to the overall impression of the poem and leads the reader in a certain direction.
EXAMPLE:
Let´s imagine what you had already looked like this:
"I tried to call a friend to tell him about something important ,but all I heard in my silent appartment was the line-busy sign"
A very simple way of "forming" these words would be just to arrange them on the page ,like this :
I
tried to call
a friend
to tell him about
something important
but
all
I heard
in
my silent apartment was
the line-busy sign
No great poetry either,of course ,but still better in some ways than what you´ve started with.Note how the breaks and the free spaces on the page add to the meaning of the poem:"tried to call" is standing betwen "I" and "a friend" - is dividing the two;"all" is set apart from the lines before and after to make it look lost on the page ,to show how little you really heard and how "white" (quiet) everything around you was.
Experiment on your own a little ,and what you´ll get following these instructions will certainly not win you prizes or even have a chance to be published ,but will very well serve the aforementioned purposes.
