How to Write Good Poetry

I know the frustration of putting your feelings in words, dedicating them to a blank page that seems to reflect all your demons as to why you can't do it. I know what it feels like when those words lurk just behind the screen and refuse to appear, leading to an afternoon or evening spent in total frustration. I sympathize with anyone who cannot find the muse or the inspiration or the words that seemed so clear at three in the morning. Here are a few tips to help you create your own masterpiece without all the angst.

1. Find your words in every day life.

The trick to this is to carry a notebook with you and to record anything you witness between other people or in nature that inspires you. If the notebook is not practical, carry a voice recorder with you and record any ideas, phrases, specific thoughts or events as they happen. Keep this recorder next to your bed at night and when the muse visits at three am you will be ready. Listen to your thoughts when you are doing the dishes. What does the water swirling down the drain look like, what feelings does it invoke in you, what can you compare it to? Listen to your internal dialogue and the dialogue of others as you go through each day.

2. Take objects and turn them into poems.

Take a pair of shoes. Write what you think these shoes would say if they could speak. What have they experienced? Think about the first time they were used and by whom. Make them tell their story. Take something that belongs to someone else and write about that other person from that object's point of view. This might seem strange at first, but take the same object and then compare it to something no one would ever compare it to e.g. a pen to dinner.

3. Read the paper.

Read the paper and take articles about newsworthy events or people and relate the story or that person's life in your own words in a poetic format. Make the story in the paper come alive. Make the story a fairy tale, use your imagination. You could also take the head lines and write a poem using them as the title or the first line. You cannot imagine what fun you could have doing this. The newspaper becomes a trove of treasure then.

4. Take one title and write different poems with it.