Poem Writing Exercise for National Poetry Month #NPM

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Poem Writing Exercise for National Poetry Month #NPM

Volunteer
Muse offers Inspiration--

So, here's today's spark--

This was a writing exercise from Julia Darling of the UK--

Poetry can be a brilliant way of exploring the things you don't know. Let me
explain. Often we write too literally, too logically or self-consciously, when
it is the imaginative connections - the leaps of faith, the connections between
images and words - that are interesting to the writer and the reader. Poetry is
an odd combination of creative energy and technical ability. In this exercise
we are trying to let ourselves free fall, then working on the poem to give it
shape. I like poetry to be useful, and I think that by writing about what we
don't know we can explore all kinds of ideas within our minds, and help
ourselves, too.

1 Write the instructions for doing something you have no idea about, for
example:

How To Fly

How To Disappear (as in Amanda Dalton's lovely poem of that name)

Or even more specifically:

How To Speak To Lions

How To Start A Revolution

How To Make A Wedding Dress

How To Build a Space Ship

The only rule is that you don't know how to do the thing, so if you work in
rocket science, you can't do the last one. But you could choose something
emotional like How To Speak To The Dead, or even How To Fall In Love, because
none of us really know the answers to these things.

2 Make a list. If you were telling us how to fly you might write things such
as, make wings using sugar, water and wire, find an open space, and so on. Your
list might have quite bizarre things on it; as always with poetry, go for the
specific not the general.

3 Play with the list. List poems are fun, but they need to work on another
level, too. Why does the writer want to fly? Where do they want to go? Try to
make your poem build up, have a kind of swell, so that all the images gather
together to make a whole.

4 Think about the shape of the poem on the page. Is it ragged and inconsistent?
Does it need a trim? Make a decision about punctuation. Do you need any? Where
are the line breaks? Read the poem out to find out if the vowel sounds are
pleasing. Poems should have a kind of music, and feel good to say aloud.

Here's a lin k to Julia's How Topoem, however, if you're like me, you may want to read it AFTER
you've written your poem.

~ Kells