Writing Poems

by Jeanette O'Hagan

'Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.' Rita Dove

A Poem is a 'literary work in which the expression of feelings and ideas is given intensity by the use of distinctive style and rhythm.' (OxfordDictionary)

Why read or write Poetry?

Poetry is a great way of expressing deep emotion or crystallizing an idea. Wordsworth said poetry is "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” As such it can give release of deep emotion or evoke like feelings in the reader. It often gives words to the inexpressible.

In the past, many stories and ideas were told through poetry because the rhyme, rhythm and repetition aided memory (e.g. Homer’s Iliad, Proverbs). 

Poems in fact are all around us – in the psalms, lyrics of worship songs or popular music (rock ballads, love songs), children’s picture books, proverbs, greeting cards, limericks – even advertising jingles. Poetry doesn't have to be so erudite and literary that we have no idea what it is about. Nor does have to be doggerel.

Most modern poems are relatively short and may only take a few hours to write and minutes to read. 

Writing poetry also hones skills that can help other creative writing forms – whether fiction or non-fiction. It emphasizes word choice and imagery, helps one be succinct and enhances a feel for the rhythm of language. The discipline of fitting words to a particular pattern often pushes one to look beyond the common or even cliched choices.

The one thing it probably won’t do is make you rich. Poetry books are harder to sell to publishers than novels. Even so, there are plenty of opportunities to submit work (including paid submissions and competitions).

Now you may think that writing or reading poetry is not for you. Fair enough. After all, often our encounter with poetry as school kids in the classroom was enough to inoculate us against it for life. 

But if you do have an inclination that you would like to indulge, then I say give it a go.

Month of Poetry

I've been doing just that with Month of Poetry (MOP). MOP is a challenge to write a poem a day during the month of January. This is the second time I've signed up and I’m enjoying it as much as I did last year.

I’d written a handful of poems before MOP, usually when profoundly moved (about my brother, for instance, or a pressing social issue) but with only a vague idea of what I was doing. After two MOPs, I feel like I've taken my trainer wheels off but I’m still very much a learner with, perhaps, the occasional flash of brilliance.

As with most writing, the more you do, the more you learn how to do it and the more your creativity expands. The added advantage of MOP is that we read and comment on our fellow poets' poems in a safe environment. I've read so many fantastic poems during MOP – funny, moving, deep, inspirational, personal. They are poems I relate to – about the everyday, about things that impact our world, and about faith. I've also continued to learn about new forms – the pantoum, tritina, abcdarian, sevenling etc – and to revisit forms from last year such as the trimeric, found and erasure poems.  (You can check different forms here or here or you can google them.)

Having a Go

Think you can’t do it? These days poetry is extremely flexible.

There are the more traditional forms that place stress on rhyme, rhythm, patterns and/or verse structure – ballads, sonnets or epics.

Then there are poetic forms that borrow from other cultures – Hebrew poetry which uses repetition of concepts and chiasmic structures; syllabic Japanese poetry such as the Haiku, Senryu or Tanka; Spanish poetry, etc.

However, modern poetry often dispenses with rigid rules on rhyming (blank verse) and even a set rhythm (free verse). It also experiments with new forms such as found poetry, erasures, shaped poetry.

Each Saturday, as part of MOP, we've been given specific challenges. These might relate to:

• Trying out or experimenting with different forms – e.g. haiku, erasure or an abcdarian.
• Playing with a concept – writing a colour poem, using personification or erasure.
• Or perhaps focusing on a particular image or topic – for instance, fairy tale adaptations or a particular place, season or holiday.

Then there is performance or open mic poetry, where poets get up in front of an audience and ‘preform’ their poems. But that’s another story.

Free verse is perhaps the easiest to write. Here’s an example of one of mine.

Last year Nola and I had fun adapting a new form – the trimeric invented by Charles Stone – to scripture to form scriptural trimerics. The trimeric has four verses with 4 lines in the first and 3 in the rest (4, 3, 3, 3). Lines 2-4 of the first verse take turns as the first line of the last 3 verses. A Scriptural Trimeric uses a paraphrase of a bible verse in the first verse, and then expands on lines 2, 3 & 4 in the following verses. You can find an example here.

A simpler poetic form to try is a Cinquain – a 5 line poem with a pattern of 1/2/3/4/1 – for instance it can be words, parts of speech or syllables.

Here’s an example:

Snake

sinuous, green

winding, writhing, gliding

graceful backyard dancer hiding

treehugger

Jeanette O'Hagan 19 January 2015

Maybe you could give it a go – and even share your results in the comments below J.

If you do want to give poetry a go or to improve your existent skills, there's plenty of resources available – websites, workshops etc. Nola Passmore's The Write Flourish has a series on poetry at the moment. Reading poetry also helps - maybe try Andrew Lansdowne or Cameron Semmens.

I think the biggest thing is just to have a go.

So tell me – do you read and/or write poetry. What do you like about it? Who's your favourite poet? Are you willing to have a go?

For a bit of fun, I've included my MOP Abcdarian challenge – 

An acrostic plumbs down the line

Bold ballads boast of love and epic deeds

Canticles waft praises to Deity

Doggerel descends sublime to ridiculous

Erasure applies rubbers artistically

Found verse catches the everyday with finesse

Grammar essential if sometimes bent

Haiku nature's simple syllabic cadence

Iambic feet stamp the beat

Jingles send verse out to beg and entreat

Kumbaya my Lord, come by here

Letters, limericks, ladders, laments and lyrics

Metaphors and metonymy our wordcrafters' tools

Narrative verse tells us stories

Odes uplift just about anything

Performance poets brave open mic

Quatrains queue in four neat lines

Rhyme and rhythm gild the lily

Senryu, Haiku's anthropomorphic cousin

Trimerics expound three of four lines

Upside down and downside up

Villanelles interlacing recurring refrain

Weaving wondrous word tapestries

X a greek chiasma linking structure

Yesterday's forms and today’s new ruptures

Zestful, zany, sorrowful or funny

26 letters twirl and weave

an ABCs of poem for you and me.

Jeanette O'Hagan c 10 January 2015

Jeanette has practiced medicine, studied communication, history and theology and has taught theology.  She is currently caring for her children, enjoying post-graduate studies in writing at Swinburne University and writing her Akrad's fantasy fiction series.  You can read some of her short fiction here. She has recently had a short story published as part of the general market Tied in Pink Anthology  (profits from the anthology go towards Breast Cancer research) . 

She is actively involved in a caring Christian community. 

You can find her at her Facebook Page or webistes  JennysThread.com or Jeanette O'Hagan Writes .