Give Yourself the Gift of Writing Poetry: 3 Tips To Help Unlock Your Poetic Potential
Now, more than ever, it's easy to try out a creative outlet without too much research or context. Since the pandemic has kept most people behind closed doors for the foreseeable future, a lot of people are trying out more solitary outlets. These outlets have often blossomed into enduring habits, and even ways of life for some - for example, the roller skaters who now have careers as influencers on Instagram. Many people turn to creative writing in good times and bad times alike, but one part of writing creatively that's often overlooked is the joy of poetry.
While creative writing can be stressful, poetry grants you some specific benefits. When you read a poem, you are inviting a sense of uncertainty and mystique into your consciousness, often more powerfully than when you read prose. When you write a poem, you're doing the same thing with your otherwise straightforward language. Especially during a time when we're reading more "virtual" text than ever, to make up for a lack of in-person communication, it's important to break up these blocks of straightforward text with something more, for lack of a better word, poetic.
This choice has to be active in order to work. The act of thinking or speaking poetically is just the act of choosing to let it be part of what you do. How do you know you're writing a poem? Or if the poem you're writing is really a poem? You read it back and it says to you, I am telling you something differently than how a story would tell it to you. It is an active choice to fragment or distort or transform your way of writing into something you wouldn't normally write. Sometimes all it needs to be different is the reading. However it comes to be, your first poems might dare to be spun from an otherwise ordinary concept.
Here are three tips to unlock your poetic potential.
1. Find Your Poetic Voice
I will hazard a guess that, if you’re new to reading and writing poetry, you might assume that "poetry" falls into one of three categories:
1. Metered, rhyming poems, often about love. Think: Shakespeare.
2. Performance-based poetry, or slam poetry. Think: Marc Smith.
3. Plain-spoken poetry that reads a little like prose. Think: Rupi Kaur.
The dictionary will tell you that poetry is "writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm." So, in a way, none of them are wrong!
The one thing that they all have in common is an intentional choice of words, which roughly translates into a poet's voice. Poetry can be whatever you want it to be, so long as you are using your own organic voice, and everyone's voice is different. Your own poetic voice can be different from the voice you use in other writing applications, and it can differ from poem to poem. Maintaining a constant voice in your early work will help you figure out what your poems sound like. You have to listen for this voice, before you set out to write a poem.
2. Get it Out
As is the case with any form of creative writing, this is often easier said than done. The advice I have given to people who are just starting out is to close your eyes and let your thoughts collect. The dictionary definition of poetry hinges on "a specific emotional response." While writing does not have to be therapy, poetry can be immensely useful in describing emotions and experiences that are otherwise challenging. What are you feeling, when you close your eyes? Or, what's something that you think deserves to be celebrated, or even just noticed, in a poem?
Another gift of writing poetry is that, the more poems you write, the better they become. The more time you spend thinking and writing poetically, the more enduring your poem will be. Artists from all walks of life have described "carrying a poem around in their head all day." Maybe, while you're writing a poem, you hear a melody, and your poem becomes a song (this can also happen in reverse). The possibilities are endless, if you allow for poetry to have a place in your life.
3. Read More Poetry
Relatedly, the more poetry you read, the better your poems are. If you've figured out what kind of poems you want to write, then try to read authors within that genre. If you're still struggling to find your voice, or you just want to branch out, there is nothing to be lost from seeking out poetry that's outside of what you'd usually reach for.
Writing poetry doesn't just benefit you - poetry's effect on the general public is undeniable. While there are very few people who might describe themselves as having made poetry their living (whatever that means), the enduring importance of poetry is understood by many.
That said, there is a common way of thinking that poetry isn't for everyone. However, the poets who have become famous (or even just published) all had to start somewhere. Maybe it isn't the thing that launches you or your writing into fame and fortune, but you're never going to know the full benefits of poetry until you give it a try.
