Inspiration & Writing Tools

What do I even write about? Well, good question. The nice thing about poetry is it can be about anything at all.

• A conversational rant (or a few observant statements), a letter or commentary could easily be prose poetry.  
• I associate “Found Poetry,” here as well. It’s called Found Poetry because we “find” it in the most random places. Signs, pamphlets, other books, other poems. For example, you are looking through a newspaper and see a few sentences compiled together: “Car found. Deep blue, maybe a little old. Still has some life in it, hmm. Six thousand.” Simple things like that might seem poetic to some individual; it’s honestly up to you as far as what *you* find aesthetic in little bits and pieces.
• Creating a speaker who “feels” something, who is emotionally affected by a person, thing or situation—if you feel like doing this, you might compose a lyrical poem.
• Imagine: someone across the street steps out of a bakery or store and they are carrying a box, but imagine where they are going. Make a small story for them, where they’re going, why they are buying those things or who they are buying them for, and you have a narrative poem. Or maybe they aren’t buying those things for anyone; and they wish they could. Lyrical? There are many possibilities with poetry.

Don’t worry about the structure of the poem. This can be intentional before-hand, if per se, you are intent on creating a poem with a certain look about it, but this can absolutely come after you get your words down on paper.

Your writing environment is particularly important. There are certain elements that make a poem come to life:

• The senses; touch, sight, sound, taste, how are you existing in your writing space, and what can you help the reader experience? Show the reader what that dessert your friend is eating might taste like. Tell them what defining qualities you see in the room around you. What does samphire at the bottom of the sea feel like?
• Empathy: writing with empathy is a good tool; it allows you to guess what life is like in another person’s daily routine, what it is they might be thinking with that facial expression, and what inanimate objects may or may not feel if they *could,* which leads into the next point:
• Personification & Apostrophe: adding human-like attributes to inanimate objects or applying humanistic thoughts and feelings onto sentient beings like animals and even young babies.
• Apostrophe specifically deals with giving inanimate objects a human-like persona and often shows up in the form of a feminine identity. People often label vehicles like ships, cars, motorcycles as “she.” Even Earth, is referred to as “she,” and it is “Mother Gaia” who we often notice when we read about myth.
• Reading other poems: this might sound like a simple one, but getting inspiration from another poet is very helpful. As an experiment, try mimicking another author’s writing style and maybe something will surface.
• An easy way to begin a poem is by making minute observations. What are the things around you? It is perspective that really tends to drive a poem since it is the product of individuals’ personal thoughts. Displaying those thoughts in a manner unique to *you* may or may not be a challenge, but that leads into the next point:
• Persona: your writing style or persona doesn’t often leap onto the page. Your muse will not always be playful and cooperative. It takes time, and sometimes, a lot of it to really develop and hone your own unique writing style. It is something that appears gradually out of all the bits and pieces you write, and eventually, a bold commonality might be seen between all of them. This is usually a hint at where your tone often goes and where your persona shines as a writer.

Writing prompts are also really great with nudging you in the right direction. We don’t always know what we should write about. Maybe it’s our calling to sometimes tell others’ stories instead of our own.

“Every time I start on a new book, I am a beginner again. I doubt myself, I grow discouraged, all the work accomplished in the past is as though it never was, my first drafts are so shapeless that it seems impossible to go on with the attempt at all, right up until the moment…when it has become impossible not to finish it.” – Simone De Beauvoir, Force of Circumstance

Here’s an interesting prompt that focuses on personification:

Find your inner dog, or cat (as seen in Write Starts! by Hal Zina Bennett)

            Write from the point of view of a dog, cat, or other animal. Think of the animal’s inherent limitations and abilities--- extraordinary abilities in particular—as you do. For example, writing form a dog’s point of view you might focus attention on the canine’s highly developed sense of smell. If I were a dog sniffing the cuff of my human’s pant leg, I might know exactly where he’s been --- across the street with the blond lady who lives with three cats and smells like roses and cooking cabbage. At the same time, I might be quite puzzled about the funny noises humans make whenever they kneel down to pay my head and I lick their faces (cooing noises).

            Particularly look for ways to use irony, to have your animal narrator bring attention to human behavior or the idiosyncrasies of another species. With a cat, you might be preoccupied with scents, similar to dogs in that respect, but maybe you would put yourself above dogs--- literally and figuratively--- because of your capacity to leap and climb. If you happen to be one of the more fortunate humans who have animal companions in your life, try looking at yourself from the point of view of that animal, including its feelings of loyally and affection for you. Or maybe, contrariwise, there’s an animal in your life whom you view as a nuisance or even an enemy: the deer who comes down at night and dines on your flowers, the bat that’s taken up residence in the rafters of your garage, the gopher who decimates your garden every summer. Describe an incident that happened from the deer or the bat’s or the gopher’s point of view, not from your own place of frustration or anger.

            Don’t overlook creatures who might seem like the most unlikely candidates as authors: the spider who weaves intricate gossamer patterns in the trellis outside your kitchen window, the goldfish who turns and swims eagerly to you whenever you approach its bowl, the blue jay who scolds you when you take out the garbage, the big catfish swimming in the pond in the park near your home, perhaps even a housefly.

            Try using both a first-person and a third-person narrative voice in this exercise. First person of a cat: “I began plotting my next move as I lay on the fat branch of the apple tree, basking in the morning sun and watching the stupid dog nosing around in the dirt searching for my scent.”

            Third persona; “K.T. McPheline lay contentedly on the fat branch of the apple tree, basking in the morning sun, grinning as the dog ran around the backyard with his nose to the ground, with no idea where that troublesome cat had gone.”

            Comic relief and satire is always welcome: “Fup’s favorite movies were romances whether light and witty or murderously tragic. She watched intently from her roost on the back of the seat, occasionally tilting her head to quack in sympathy at the problems assailing love…”

            Translating that lesson to human terms, you might take on characteristics that are quite outside your first-hand experience, such as writing from their point of view or taking on the mythological attributes of a vampire or centaur (Tara: Oh, Stephenie Meyer. What will we do with you?).

Post any helpful comments you might have if you had luck already composing something for the workshop, you brave soul.