Writing poems

Free Verse:

Find two or three sentences of prose from a book, newspaper or magazine. Now transform this prose into poetry, by inserting line-breaks in the text in order to highlight whatever you consider most important or interesting. A line can be as short or as long as you want. You can change the original order of the sentences, but not the order of the words of any one sentence. As a mercy, you can repeat one line once. You are allowed to cut out words, but not add any.

• One of the lines, or a word from one of the lines, could be the title.
• Order the lines to direct the reader’s attention.
• Does any particular line immediately suggest itself as an opening or final line?
• What strikes you as the most important section? This should be your focus. Let the words tell you what the poem is about.

  (from What Is Poetry) http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/culture/literature-and-creative-writing/literature/what-poetry/content-section-0

Free-write:

Part I: Make a list of five to seven things on which you are an “authority.” You might be an authority on video games, getting speeding tickets, astrology, jewelry-making, baking bread, gardening, or shooting pool, etc.

Part II: Now choose one of those things and make a list of fifteen to twenty-five words that are specific to that particular activity. Words that people use when engaged in that activity that might otherwise be absent or infrequent from conversation.

Part III: Now do a five-minute freewrite from the prompt, “I Remember the Last Time It Rained” using as many words from your list as possible.

Free-write/roll questions:

a. What is something you would do if you didn’t care what anyone thought?

b. What’s something you’ve lost that you wish you still had?

c. Six minute, six word Sestina exercise

d. Abstract to Concrete-Asbstract words: turn them into concrete images (sound, sight, taste, smell, feel)hope, doubt, fear, loneliness, passion, desire, faith, mystery, anger, joy, hatred, fear, ecstasy, growth, pain, calm, homesickness, resentment, patience, loyalty, freedom, bitterness, love

e. What would you like to be for a day (inanimate)? Imagine you are an inanimate object: a planet, a mountain, a shoelace, a lake, a mirror. Write from the perspective of that thing. Explain what it is like to be you.

f. Faking It

g. What is your best survival skill?

h. What is something you would go back and do differently if you could?

i. What is something kind that someone has done for you that you will never forget, but that they may not even remember.

j. Make a new year resolution today—what would it be?

k. Getting at Metaphor

• • Metaphor is not just a game that poets play, but it is a basic tool of human comprehension. We understand things as we understand the relationship between things.  This exercise comes in three parts:

• First, use a two minute freewrite to describe the object in your group (each of you, individually) without making any comparisons of one thing to another.  Read this aloud to one another, and point out where people have ended up making comparisons. 
• Now, take this same object and conduct a five minute freewrite in which you use it to describe either:  1.)  something you are afraid of, or 2.) one of your parents.  In other words, indulge yourself in comparisons. 
• Write a poem in which you are describing or explaining the object, but, really, you are writing about what frightens you or one of your parents.  If time permits, discuss this process in your group. 

l.List of five things that really matter to you—Explore one of them in a freewrite, why does it interest you, what is your experience with it, why does        it matter, how would you like others to feel or think about this issue or situation?

m.Put together a form with twelve requirements (one from each student)—closing exercise, write that poem.

n. Five Easy Pieces

• imagine a person you remember or know well
• imagine a place where you find them
• five sentences:
  • describe the person’s hands.
  • describe something they are doing with the hands,
  • use a metaphor to say something about some exotic place
  • mention what you would want to ask this person,
  • the person looks up or toward you, notices you there gives you an answer that suggest he or she only gets part of what you asked

o. Mystery: What is something that you wish you could know that you will never know (my dad’s stories—was my grandfather an Irish mobster—did my lipstick fall in the toilet)

p. Dramatic Monologue: write a monologue from the perspective of one of the characters: What does my character want? Do they like or dislike anyone here? If they could speak their mind what would they say? Would they rather be anywhere else?

(the previous exercises are from Felecia Caton-Garcia)

Some Poetry Workshop Guidelines:

First, read each poem twice (at least). Once to get the general gist, mood, and feel of the thing, then again to begin the process of deep noticing.

Your job as a reader in a workshop is to help the writer see their own poem clearly.  What you would do if it were your poem is not important—you have your own poems to write, but this is someone else’s poem, and so you want to try to understand what their project and intent is.

Provide written and spoken commentary for each work-shopped poem. Be specific. Answer the questions of “why” and “how” as often as you can.  Write on each other’s poems to show where you are responding to exactly.

Consider these areas:

• form: what patterns do you notice? This might include line lengths, stanza lengths, repetition, rhyming, meter or rhythm. Does the form suit the content, in your opinion? Why or why not?
• imagery: are there sensory descriptions and details? Are they clear? Concrete (as opposed to abstract)?
• language: how has the poet used simile or metaphor? Is there word play? What is the diction like? (conversational, formal, slangy, regional?) Do the words seem carefully chosen? Why or why not?
• intent: what do you think the poet wants to achieve with this poem? How do you know? In what ways does the poem succeed in its purpose, and in what ways does it fall short?
• questions: what do you want to know, after reading this poem?
• trouble spots: where are you lost, confused, uncertain, or uninterested? Why?
• favorite moments: what words, phrase, lines, images, ideas, etc., appeal to you? Why?

(from Rebecca Aronson, adapted from multiple workshops and sources)

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