Have you ever sat there staring at
paper, ready to write, but unsure where to begin? Want a solution that will overcome even worst writer's block? Anyone can start writing poetry today using a few simple techniques. One, two, ...?
Did you say or think three when you saw above? If not, you certainly would when I asked you to fill in blank. Your mind is a powerful machine that recognises or creates patterns. To make this work for you as a poet, you simply have to lay out materials in an implied pattern, and let your mind do its thing.
The "materials," in this case, of course, are words or ideas. So let's round up some materials for an example. If you want to write a poem about thunderstorms, you might start by writing down relevant words, and then choose more evocative ones: flash, blowing, rumble, night, deadly and rain, perhaps.
Now you set pattern. In this case, we'll write a four-line poem, using one of our words in each line. We'll only decide if we want a ryming poem after we start. This is what I came up with after five minutes:
Rain stands still in sky
Trees dance as in a painting
In a flash it is here and gone
And night grumbles at being revealed
It doesn't matter if most aren't good poems. You just have to write a lot of them, and then work on re-writing ones with potential. With a little practice, you can write a dozen poems in an hour, then pick out gems. My wife has had poetry published using Deal-a-Poem, a game we created based on this technique, so we know that it works, and it's fun as well.
