Finding a space to write in that is right for you can be invaluable, weather it be the shed, a coffee shop or your bed at three in the morning. Where do you like to right and why? Are there circumstances where you find it impossible to work?
Now create your perfect writing space – tell us about it, how it looks and smells and feels. What master pieces are going to be created?
It is spring here in the UK and the plants are all popping out of the soil (a month late due to late snow but still…). If you have a garden go and sit in it with a note pad and pen and beverage of your choice. Look around you, is it all still damp, is there an earthy smell or the heady perfume of the flowers? How are the birds behaving and what are the clouds in the sky doing?
Jot this all down.
If you do not have a garden go for an amble in the local park and find a bench.
The surroundings maybe enough to spark a poem by itself but if not construct a list on gardens and what they mean to you – did you grow up with one or always wanted one? Was it the source of a lot of your food or did the neighbours bump rubbish in it…
Again this may spark something but if it does not then write the starting line:
I will always remember that garden…
And then tell us why, this is where your notes will come in handy as you will have several points you can already add.
This picture shows an almost fungal growth of lampshades, imagine a world were light was rationed, how would light be described, how precious would it be?
Our perception of colours rely heavily on light – turn a well loved image monochrome and discrib it.
Write two description of the photos world – one with colour and light in abundance and one without, contrast and merge the two descriptions together. This may produce the outline of a poem.
Mornings are something that some people find easy voluntarily getting up at 4:30 am and so on but most people find them hard at least on those dreary grey work mornings. What are you like in the mornings?
Try waking up half an hour earlier each morning and keeping a poetry journal or notepad by your bed, sit there in the pre-dawn silence and scribble away for that half an hour. If you can remember them write down the outline of your dreams, these can be more than useful to a poet.
Look at the way the light or lack of it plays across your room, do the curtain or wall paper look odd in the misty dregs of the night?
Do you have a favourite TV programme? Some long running soap or some fantasy drama? Then why not use it as inspiration for a series of poems?
You can construct poems that convey the essence of the series or ones that focus on individual characters.
Start by making a list of why you like it, what draws you in, is the show addictive? Is it silly and not true to life but you love it anyway? Then make a list of characters and their main attributes.
You may wish to constrain the poems by making them three stanzas long.
This photograph of father and child exploring gently the world of white wonder fires the nostalgia gland in many people even if it is some half remembered reference to A.A. Milne’s stories and poems rather than our own lives. What memories or feelings does this image provoke in you?
Do you identify with the father or the child? Neither but have always wanted that sort of connection? What sort of discoveries and adventures will they have?
Think on the snow – how it feels, the rough wind and the taught skin, the smell it tingled your nostrils with. Did you get hot chocolate and toasted tea buns?
As you write try to build the scene up, the feelings, the sights, the sounds, take your reader on a magical adventure.
Rhyme and rhythm are useful devices for poets. An interesting exercise is to make a table of rhyme, this can be done by hand using a ruler or on the computer with spreadsheets. Take the ending sound at, then make a column of all the one syllable words that end with this sound – cat, sat, mat etc… not everything may rhyme with the way the word is pronounced so have a second column for such words or a devision within the cell of the spreadsheet to cope with this.
Now make a column for all the two syllable words that end in at, another for the three syllable words and so on until you run out! Then if you want you can think of slant or half rhymes that could go with your chosen word ending. Maybe the words have ot at the end or at in the middle etc…
These tables can be extremely useful if you are creating a rhyming piece, they can also be useful if you are trying to avoid an obvious rhyme as they will give you a plethora of other words to use. The syllable break down helps you find the right length word for poem so that you do not have to twist and distort the rhyme (unless that is what is wanted).
This exercise can also be helpful if you are trying to avoid accidental rhyme too – if makes you more aware of what does and does not rhyme and those little sneaky almost rhymes that can ruin a good prose poem.
As part of National Poetry Writing Month the Tell Me More site is collection tweeted poems under the hash tag TMMPoetry. Go and check out the website and the hash tag – they have done similar initiatives in the past with wonderful creative effect!
The 140 characters of twitter means that poets have to streamline their thought process, it lends itself nicely to the shorter forms and can be some what more challenging than writing an essay in our experience!
Another thing that is good to try is the creation of an epic poem via tweets – entire novels have been writing in little 140 character snippets so why not an epic poem?
Epic poems in this instant being very long novel length poems rather than just brilliant glittering literary gems though of course they may be those as well!
If you do not have twitter then adapt the challenge to Facebook or Google Plus, start a page up specifically for the purpose.
From the dark abyssal depth to the shallow blue lagoon of holiday bliss the sea is a wealth of worlds waiting to be explored. Write down all the different characteristics you can think off that would represent the sea, create a person or persona to represent each of these aspects and write a stanza for each.
Maybe have them interact in further stanzas.
Initially do not worry too much about the number of lines in each stanza or even if they are rhyming or not. You will probably find that an almost structure will appear by itself which you can letter edit the poem to fit better.
Urban centres are often subject to urban decay – where once there was industry now there is ruin and dereliction. Writing appears on the walls, sometimes they are ugly sprawls of unreadable blobby lines, sometimes they are messages reflexting the terror or frustration of the population and increasingly they are lovely pieces of are cheering up the shabby bits of town.
Is there such a place near you? What sort of people hang around there? Did you hang around in such a place as a youth?
Think on the image above what is behind that blue fence, who wrote the message. From whom are the reclaiming the city and what state is it in?
Now imagine what it would feel like to have wondered into that area at twilight when you don’t belong – how dangerous is it? Very? Not at all?
Jot the concepts down and try to construct them into a poetic narrative.