7 Steps to Becoming an Awesome Poet

Serious poets want to improve their level of writing, but how do you go about that? These steps will help:

Read a lot of poetry. Focus on the works of classical and contemporary poets, especially Pulitzer or Nobel prize-winning collections.

Study poetry forms and techniques. How-to articles on this blogs plus A Poet's Guide Writing Poetry and The ABC's of Poetry: A Dictionary for Children and for Fun will help you to expand your “tool box.” The more you know about poetry, the more options you have as you write and revise your poems.

Revise. Let your own poems sit until you’ve forgotten what they say. Then read aloud and correct anything that seems off. Cut unnecessary words to compress the language and tighten the beat. If something has been said in the same way, change it up. Give it time. Make it new.

Use your good senses. Rather than relying on imagination to freshen up a poem, use your senses to note what you see, sense, smell, taste, feel, touch, and recall. Be specific. Notice details. Compare this to that in an unusual way.

Identify your strong suit. Then do something different! If imagery fills your poems, fine tune your poetic ear toward musicality. (You’ll hear this by reading each poem and revision aloud.) If you’re inclined to write rhythmic poems with end-line rhymes, break into free verse - and vice versa. If your poems take a full page, practice writing haiku. Long poems often have more than one focal point, which means you might have two or more poems in one.

Study poetry journals and anthologies to increase your publishing options. Look on the Internet for samples of poetry journals to discover ones you relate to and enjoy. If you like their work, they’ll be apt to like yours. Study individual websites to become familiar with favorite themes, style, tone, length, poetic forms, and other preferences of each publication you favor.

Have fun! Experiment. Practice. Play.

Mary Harwell Sayler, ©2018, poet-writer

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