photo by Suzy Hazelwood courtesty Pexels
Many poems have been shared here in The Circle — some written by CLP alums, and some by kindred spirits (see below for links to all of them).
What we don’t have (until now!), is guidance on how to write your own — whether you’re a future first-time poet or a regular.
Why write it, you might ask? Teacher, editor, and writer T. Cole Rachel explains that he’s “drawn to the language of poetry as a specific way of looking at the world… the best and most natural vehicle for talking about complicated feelings and making observations… hard to explain, seemingly impossible to teach…” (This does not stop him from teaching it.)
In a recent article in The Creative Independent, he shares how often he hears that someone doesn’t understand poetry, or had a bad experience with it.
For a lot of people, their misunderstanding of poetry is akin to hating ice cream your whole life because you only tasted one bad flavor as a teenager and you thought it was hard to eat. Awakening your sensibilities as a reader and writer of poetry is really all about finding the right kind of poetry for you, and knowing that whatever your personal tastes happen to be, and whatever your needs happen to be as a reader and a creature with lots of feelings, there is a particular flavor of poetry in existence that will speak directly to you.
As for our own creations, he says, “the best way to start writing poems is to simply…write a poem.”
But don’t we first need to know what makes a haiku, or an elegy, or a sonnet, epic, limerick, ode, sestina, ballad, villanelle, free verse (or any of many others – one source listed 168 types!)?
Not unless you want to. Many do find it helpful as a starting point to follow a form and have the framework to practice within. Eventually, “as with any art form, at the end of the day there are no rules and you can do whatever you want.”
He shares that the more we write about the reality of our own life with specific sensory details (as opposed to general, abstract ideas), the more our poems are interesting and vivid. Prompts that can jump-start the writing process include:
- Write a poem that starts with a description of a photograph you took, including memories it evokes or its personal significance.
- With another photograph, write a poem describing what’s going on with you in the moment you took the photo; why did you want to capture that particular thing (or person or place…)?
- Write a poem describing the physical details of the environment or landscape in a photo you took. How much can you describe so that someone could imagine the photo?
- Using a found image or photo (i.e., that you did not create) as inspiration, write an ode to a person, place, thing, or idea.
Click on Rachel’s article for general poetry sources, specific poems for inspiration, and additional advice. In it, he writes:
Often my students will turn up to our workshop and say things like, “I don’t know if I’m doing this right” or—my favorite—”I wrote something but I’m not sure if it’s actually a poem.” My response to these statements is always the same. There is no wrong way to do this… the true sign of success for any poem is not so much how it looks, but what it does—how it makes you feel…
…just write them as if no one is ever going to see them… What matters is how the actual poetry practice works for you—as a kind of meditation, as a way of making sense of the world, as a kind of sounding board to measure what’s going on in your own mind and heart… The trick with any kind of creative writing is always a matter of getting out of your own way, silencing all the negative internal voices that tell us our stories and ideas aren’t important or meaningful, tuning out arbitrary rules, and really listening to our own voice. Poetry, perhaps more than any other literary art, is uniquely suited for giving voice to the deepest parts of ourselves.
Explore poetry in The Circle created by CLP alums:
Nate Bixby (Cohort 17) remembering his poet mother
Lindsey Ruminski (Cohort 10) sharing part of Haruki Murakami’s “Kafka on the Shore”
Laura Altshul (Cohort 6) [1941–2024] on the plight of Syrian refugees, public art on the New Haven Green of immigrant faces, and a COVID-19 heroine’s daffodils
Genese Clark (Cohort 13), following your heartstring
Marian Evans (Cohort 19), “Ode to Breathe”
Niyonu Spann (Cohort 15) sharing Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ “Letter to a Young Activist During Troubled Times”
Lee Lee McKnight (Cohort 27) on the removal of basketball nets during lockdown
Claire Bien (Cohort 6) on finding joy and embracing a legacy of silliness
Genevive Walker (Cohort 11), asking “What If We Were Still”
Maria Solomon (Cohort 31) on becoming a poet
Lara Herscovitch (Cohort 10) singing from Italian balconies
And the poems by kindred spirits:
The Guest House — Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī
Upstream — Mark Nepo
Whereas — Layli Long Soldier
Movie stars — IN-Q
Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, Perhaps the World Ends Here, and For Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet — U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo
Lockdown — Richard Hendrick
Iatrogenic — Rafael Campo
We will not go back to normal — Sonya Renee Taylor
how to breathe when you want to give up — Cleo Wade
A callerse (Keeping Quiet) — Pablo Neruda
The Hill We Climb – National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman
Caminante no hay camino — Antonio Machado
Journey Home — Rabindranath Tagore
The Prophet (excerpt) — Khalil Gibran
The Night House — Billy Collins
The Face in the Stone — David Whyte
Which poem(s) would you like to see — or create — next?
Excerpts of T. Cole Rachel’s “How to write a poem” (illustrations by Sean Suchara) from The Creative Independent, published by public-benefit corporation Kickstarter “to inspire and grow the community of people who create.”
Curated by The Circle’s creative director & editor Lara Herscovitch (Cohort 10). To reach Lara directly: thecircle@clpnewhaven.org or Lara@LaraHerscovitch.com
Very niceeee;
#powerful
#wordsarelife