Learning How to Write Poetry When You Suck At Writing It by Jessica Longstreth

Let me just start by saying I like good poetry. I feel that I can appreciate this form of writing and I have some friends who are crazy good at writing poetry as well. It just seems to come naturally to them. So I wouldn't say that my problem is that I don't like poetry, it's just that I don't feel that I'm very good at writing it. Writing poetry has always seemed daunting to me, and when I rarely do write poetry I'm scared that they don't come off the right way. Poems just almost seem flimsy when I attempt to write them. I guess I just overthink it.

But recently, due to a recent English assignment, I've been forced to rethink how I write poetry. In class the other day, I opened up my poetry assignment an just stared at it awhile, unsure of what to do or write. My friends, who, unlike me, are good at poetry, were reading some of their own pieces that they were working on for the assignment. Their pieces just sounded so good! I felt (and still sort of feel) like I will never be able to write like that. So I asked, "How do you guys write poetry?"

And my friend just said, "It's basically just writing down whatever you're thinking."

That statement sounded so vague, but surprisingly, it got me started on writing some of what I think is halfway decent poetry. Things sort of just clicked about poetry when I let all of that sink in. Now, I wouldn't go as far as to say poetry is the most comfortable form of writing for me, but there are a few simple things about writing poetry that I've tried over the past few weeks that have helped ease the burden of writing it. Below are some of the ideas that helped me not overthink the writing process too much:

Pick a Topic or Idea to Write the Poem About
Knowing what I was going to write about definitely helped me keep my writing focused and direct. I found it important not to overthink my topic though and tried to keep it simple. I thought about what my friend had said and just picked whatever was really on my mind. This technique was also somewhat inspired by the poet Sarah Kay's method of making a list of ten things you know and writing poetry about those things. Keep everything simple. Don't overthink too much.

Know What the Poem Should Convey
Once I picked out a topic, I thought about what I wanted to say about that topic in my poem, and how I wanted to convey it. For example, if my topic for my poem was summer, I thought about what I wanted to say about summer in my poetry. Did I want to dedicate part of my poem to what I thought of summer? What about the summer weather, etc.? For a broad topic like summer, there are so many different thoughts that could be put into a poem, and because of this, I felt like it was a very real possibility that my thoughts could just turn into an jumbled rambling rant instead of a poem. Not that ranting in a poem is necessarily bad, but I didn't want to force thoughts into my poem that didn't belong. Therefore, I did give some effort to thinking about where I wanted my poem, or my thoughts, to go. Again, I found that it just keeps everything focused.

Poetry Doesn't Necessarily Follow A Certain Form
One thing that I had to get over when writing poetry was that poetry doesn't really follow a predesignated structure all the time. It doesn't have to rhyme, and there is not necessarily a beginning, middle, or end, like in an essay or story. Realizing this definitely made things a little bit easier, because when I was writing poetry, I could just sort of go with it. All I really thought about structure wise was that the thoughts/lines flowed well enough.


Anyways, these are just somethings that definitely helped me sit down and start some poetry for a recent assignment. I am by no means a great poet and therefore it is totally possible these pieces of "advice" could only work for me and my crazy thinking process. Just thought I'd share!