I’m happy to announce that Wingless Dreamer Publisher has included my poem “Salmon Fishing on the Oregon Coast” in their Sea or Seashore Poetry Anthology! What an honor ? Thank you so much!
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I have a few poems about salmon fishing that I’ve kept under wraps for a few years now. After carefully evaluating my collection, I felt that “Salmon Fishing on the Oregon Coast” was a good fit for what WDP called for in their submissions page.
What I love most about writing poetry about the sea and my experiences along the coast is playing with the striking imagery. My goal for writing nature-related poetry is to bring details to life, make them crisp, and vivid so I can hopefully capture the mood of what it’s like to be there.
Unfortunately, I’m unable to include an excerpt from my poem but if you’d like to read other poems of mine visit my POETRY archive. You can also find my poetry on Insta alongside my photos of San Francisco.
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Liked this post? Try this one! A Poem for My Love: Poetry Mentor
Writing poetry isn’t easy, but I’d say coming up with ideas for poems is even more challenging. Did you know that it can take decades for some poets to write a poem? C.K. Williams once said that writing one of his poems took him 25 years.
I’m not surprised. I have a few poems germinating in a digital file. Sometimes I imagine my poem drafts morphing into gorgeous pieces that blossom like magnolias all on their own, but this is never gonna happen.
Since I have difficulty coming up with ideas, I thought I’d share with you, my fellow poet, the three ways I come up with ideas. Continue reading to learn them and find out how I can help you write poetry.
Everyone has their own definition of what makes a poem “good.” I’ve spent a lot of time thinking and reading about the subject, only to find that there are varying interpretations of what “good” is.
Without getting into a cyclical debate on “good” poetry, I’ll say that I think poetry successfully does its job when it strikes an inner cord with the reader. And you’ll also feel this cord struck when ideas for poems suddenly come to you.
An emotional response, a human truth, a relatable scene or moment that digs deeper into what is happening on the surface. The point of poetry is to convey human experience with the bare bones of the language.
When you write poetry, you’re using essential communication tools to convey a profound experience (it doesn’t matter if you’re writing with an audience in mind or not). So, getting into what kind of ideas make good poetry?
We can always say the usual: life, love, and death. Breaking these three essential elements down is easy, and what could be said has been said before. But the point is to write poetry in your unique style and voice because there’s always another way to say the same thing.
The life experience that is unique to you influences your poetry. So, when you think about what kind of ideas are present in “good” poetry, what do you think of first?
I don’t just use these ways to develop ideas for poems. I also use them to start brainstorming about short story or novel ideas, but those processes have multiple levels. Different parts of my brain shift gears and work in various ways depending on what I’m writing.
On a side note: For me, it’s also crucial to collect words, so when I find words that I’d love to use in poems, I quickly jot them down in a tiny notebook I keep with me.
I hope you find my ways as helpful as I do!
1. Pick an Object Near You
Doesn’t matter where you are. I want you to pick something. It can be mundane, like a window, door, chair, or even a half-eaten meal or cold cup of coffee. Anything will do; the point is to pick an object and write about it.
From here, we can go in any direction we want. What I do is write a long description of the object, going into as much detail as possible. I love describing shapes and colors and will often research particular shades of colors until I find the closest match.
Freewrite, and don’t stop until you feel like you’ve wrung the object dry. Ask yourself, “if someone read my description, could they picture the [object] without seeing it in person?” Once you have that begin stripping it.
Cut out unnecessary words, and chisel the writing down to your absolute favorite parts of it. Take this piece, a very rough draft of a poem, and use this as a baseboard. Start playing with what you have as you think about an idea for your poem.
You’re waiting for pieces to click together in your mind, for connections to be made that jump instantaneously out at you. By giving yourself a starting point, you’ll be able to build the framework of a poem.
2. Using the Five Senses to Come Up With Ideas for Poems
I love using the five senses in my poetry. Mainly, I emphasize sight and sound since these senses are so strongly connected with my memories. I prefer relying heavily on the senses when coming up with ideas because I love imagery poetry.
Take a moment, close your eyes, and slowly think about what your body senses. Go over the five senses: taste, touch, smell, sight, and sound, and really think about what’s happening around you.
Now, write down your observations in detail. Put your writing away for a few minutes. I usually give it five to ten minutes, then reread it and pick out parts that stand out to you.
Take these parts and begin playing with them, put them together, rearrange them, expand or trim them, or build a scene. Once you begin playing with your words, your mind will open up, and the ideas will start coming.
Looking for a book about how to write poetry? I highly recommend Poemcrazy?
3. Choose a Moment You Experienced This Week
Were you taking out the trash, and the bag broke right before you could put it in the bin? Did you receive a letter from a loved one out of the blue? Or how about you were out walking and saw an interaction between two people that made you pause?
There must be a moment that you have from this week that you can draw from. I love noticing the mundane things like if a product changes the color of its packaging labels or if the same three cigarette butts are in the same spot in a gutter I pass every day as I leave my apartment.
Not very exciting, I know, but there are many moments to think about. And you can write about any moment you want, from what you had for breakfast on Tuesday to how the people restlessly moved while in line at the post office.
Your goal here is to nail down a moment, write about it (you guessed it, in great detail), and then go from there. You’re looking for tiny slices of the human experience outside of yourself that you can dive into.
Write about the world around you, and don’t be afraid to write gibberish. Get all the details down so you can parse through them. I often find that ideas for poems will surface after I analyze my notes.
I meet a lot of flustered people that are trying to write. Whether they want to write more or get started, most of them don’t have any ideas for poems. Frustrated, they sometimes ask me for help.
Still, I can only say so much because I feel that writing poetry is a personal experience and it’s very easy to find a list of poetry prompts.
So what are the benefits of my three ways to come up with ideas? They work.
I gave up on poetry prompts a while ago because I was tired of trying to write about the same old stuff. I don’t want to write poetry about anything. I want to pinpoint my unique experiences and observations and root my poetry in them.
Your Favorite Creative Writing Mentor
I hope my ways help you come up with ideas for poems. There’s nothing I love more than helping my fellow poets and writers succeed. And I’m always looking for the best books on writing and new resources I can share.
But if you feel like you need some extra help writing poetry or any type of creative writing project you’re working on, I can help. You can book a 90-minute zoom session with me, and I’ll work with you one-on-one as your favorite creative writing mentor.
I’m always open to finding a budget and schedule that works for both of us! ?
Interested? You can learn more about how I’ll be your favorite creative writing mentor and the additional services I offer. Feel free to email me anytime at alinahappyhansenwriter@gmail.com, I can’t wait to connect with you!
Want to read some of my poetry? Check out my Poetry Archives!
Poetry: the expectations vs. reality has blown my life to bits. As a kid, I dreamed of being the complicated heroine I adored in my books. Spending hours reading and writing my own stories full of monsters and the maybe-good-maybe-not people who’d either side with a monster or kill them with a flip of a coin. Poetry never crossed my mind. Like I’ve said before, I thought it was some high-brow antiquated form of writing that was beyond my ability to understand.
From Novels to Poetry: How Expectations Changed with Reality
But I didn’t realize then that words had something else to give, that poetry would consume me and enliven my soul. Now, I gladly spend my nights pouring myself an ice-cold glass of gin so I can loosen my brain just enough to untwist the words I’ve wrung in my mind all day, hoping that if I do, a poem will tumble out like a rockslide down a mountain.
Poetry: expectations vs. reality? It dropped into my life more than a decade ago and made it even more hellish.
As I got older, I still lost myself in books. Flipping back and forth between Majors in College, I was torn between music, art, and writing. The words won me over, but honestly, I think I’d still have an unhealthy obsession if I’d chosen one of the other two. And they both still thrive, resurfacing when I get the itch to express in a different medium.
But soon, the expectations I had about what I was going to do would come crashing down thanks to reality.
I used to be a kid haunted by ghost stories, urban myths, and monsters I reckoned were just undiscovered species. Naturally drawn to the darker elements, I found myself enthralled with creatures that represented so much more than just embodied nightmares; they represented society’s fears and tensions between ideologies of the repressors and the oppressed.
Now, I’m haunted by poetry, words, and the invisible threads of communication between us that make life richer and sometimes disastrous.
How Does This Relate to Poetry and My Expectations vs. Reality?
As a poet and writer who’s dabbled in everything from short creative non-fiction to writing a full-length novel, I’ve realized that my expectations were never going to match reality. It was never going to be straightforward.
I thought if I was going to be a writer, I’d either only write short stories or only write novels. I was confused when reality hit, and I knew I was also a poet.
Can I be a poet, too, on top of it all? Why not?
Why not write whatever I want and play with words inside and outside genres and forms. That’s what art is in the end; playing with tools that either create or destroy, wondering if something slightly different will slink out of the water. And sometimes fashioning your own tools that spin the bottle on its head.
Interested in browsing my blog posts about fiction writing? Go HERE.
I never thought I’d like poetry, and it never crossed my mind that someday I’d be a poet.
The Reality of Being a Poet
I’m neck-deep in poetry books and obsessed with forms. I’ve acquired too many notebooks full of collected phrases and odd words. They glow on the pages like carefully collected paint samples, glossy and matte, in thousands of different shades just waiting to be chosen.
I can’t wait to try new words and create a fresh or dark vision from the scraps I’ve collected over time. Dictionaries and thesauruses have become troves of tools. I can’t get enough of discovering a new symbol that holds a piece of human experience, ready to be reconfigured into a unique mosaic of form and meaning.
Takeaway: I guess life is pretty surprising (when you find out you’re a poet).
Poetry has taught me that words are the most powerful tools on the planet. They can help create civilizations and destroy them. They can connect people and be used as weapons to harm and kill. Following the roots, to write poetry is to be human, to desire a connection with others over shared experiences. To feel the bright burn of emotions and thrive in them.
Poetry: Expectations Dashed by Reality
I’m still not sure sometimes if I can hold my grasp on poetry and if I can keep creating and playing with words with the same fervor that I’ve had for more than ten years. But that’s okay. Because it’s not supposed to be simple or easy; it’s poetry.
In this post, I’ll discuss why I choose to obsess over poetry. How I was first exposed to it and why my passion for reading and writing has led me to where I’m at today with my writing routine. I also provide multiple lists of recommended reading, book reviews, and other blog posts I’ve written about poetry.
In 2011, I was exposed to poetry in a creative writing course in college. I read Wittgenstein and Maggie Nelson, which finally cracked open the world of poetry and creative writing in a way I could grasp. Since then, I’ve fallen down into a rabbit hole I don’t think I’ll ever want to get out of.
Recommended Reading: My Two Favorite Poetry and Writing Books
I haven’t been the same for years. I’ve found myself continually wanting to write and explore literature. Over time, my obsession with writing poetry resulted in various daily writing routines that I have tweaked to optimize writing output. And I’ve maintained a habit of writing for one to two hours per day since then.
Are you looking for an alpha or beta reader to review your poems? I can help! Learn more HERE.
Poetry: It’s Not as Fancy as You Think and It’s for Everyone
I used to think that poetry was some high-brow artistic form of writing. I thought that I’d never be able to understand, let alone write poetry, even though I was already an avid writer and reader.
Maybe it’s because poetry is intimidating at first due to its literary history and importance to countless civilizations, both ancient and new. Perhaps it’s because of its history of religious poetry, passing down legends and mythologies, or its significant use in addressing societal and cultural shifts. This fear of poetry is pretty common for people interested in it but hesitant to jump in.
I read tons of books on writing poetry. I’m keen to find reliable resources with pro tips that I can use to push my poetry in new directions. But reading poetry more than writing seems to positively affect my work. I’d highly recommend balancing time between reading and writing poetry to advance your writing.
Reading Suggestions: Excellent Books on Poetry by Robert Pinsky
Interested in Writing Poetry? Jump into the Rabbit Hole and Have Fun!
What can I say about poetry, about writing? Read, write, write some more, and get your hands on as much great poetry as possible. If you love it, let it become your obsession. Take joy in poetry and memorize poems you love; this has helped me compose and acknowledge the value of being able to read poetry effectively at events.
Are You a Poet? Or Are You New to Writing Poetry? Let’s Chat
Do you write poetry? When did you start, and why do you continue to write? Connect with me today and leave a comment below! I’d love to know your influences and what your writing routine is.
Enjoyed this post?Here’s 3 easy ways to come up with ideas for poems!
