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After contemplating the language as a basis theory for recording your thoughts, hopefully by now you're in the mood to write. The next stage involves developing your abilities as a writer, but with a discipline that will still make writing poetry enjoyable.

Many poets (new and old) find that imagination is their worst enemy. The mind is a container of various conflicting thoughts, which, at times, can influence the poet in over-complicating a poem, as if it were a statement of his own creativity/willingness to be different. The task of creating a poem, in this manner, can seem very exhausting.

Instinctive Writing

Some of the best and most enjoyable poems to read are the simple ones. Take Charles Bukowski’s ‘an ordinary poem’ as an example. It begins:

“Since you’ve always wanted

to know I am going to admit that I never liked Shakespeare,

Browning, the

Bronte sisters."

Here, the poet goes on to list a variety of things that he doesn’t like. There is no rhyme scheme or set line breaks. Bukowski appears to have written instinctively; in other words, it's as if he refused to be overwhelmed by poetry’s many different forms or elements of poetic diction. He simply had the desire to write what was in his head at that particular moment in his life.

Try this: Start with a theme or idea you want to convey. This could be anything, from a expressing your feelings for a loved one, or writing in memory of a family member you have recently lost. For now, don’t think about creating a poem; simply, brainstorm your thoughts as quickly as you can upon the page’s entirety. These notes will be used as an emotive source for developing your poem later on.

Take A Break Then Develop Your Poem

Using rhyme will disrupt your flow, so when you do come to organising your words, write in free verse. Also, using a Thesaurus could make your work seem more exciting, but avoid using it for every word, as this will create large gaps between your active and your passive vocabulary.

Although, at this stage, you are writing primarily as a way of expressing yourself, rather than writing to gain readership, making that little bit more effort to organise your work will also make it seem more plausible.

A slight discipline in organising your thoughts into poetry would be the use of the line break. This leaves an emphasis upon the final word, so break at a noun or verb, rather than a conjunction. Line breaks are considered, also, to be a slight pause -- perhaps, to the lesser extent of a comma. Starting a new stanza (paragraph) when a new person is speaking, you are changing tense, or want to make a particular line stand out, also contributes to the early stages of constructing poetry.

Remember, just because a poem is simple, doesn’t mean to say that it is dumb. A poet may have the tendency to overwork his writing as a result of being overly ambiguous, or simply fearing what other people may think it. But, poetry is a private, hidden heart, a snapshot of a particular moment in your life. Feelings come first, so develop your work around this idea.

(C) Andy Carrington, 2009.