Top Ten Tips - Inspiring Your Inner Poet
By Guest Tipster | Jul 07, 2008
Categories: Activities, Artists, Behavior, Books, Creativity, Difficulty, Fun, Hobbies, Love, Personality, Relationships, Tips, Writing
Today’s Guest Tipster is Amber D’Amato, a writer who graduated with a B.A. in Creative Writing with a focus in Poetry and a minor in Visual Arts. She considers herself a lover, but more of a fighter; a bohemian, muse, writer, bibliophile and painter; free-spirited, wanderlustful and good-humored, yet has bad grammar; and a bit of an insomniac and dilettante - all while blogging for Dilettante Designs, The Dilettante’s Valentine, The Starving Artist and Hiding Behind A Design. She also recently wrote a great tips article about defending you skin during the summer over at Club Double.
Want to write a poem, but don’t know where to start? Try some of Amber’s helpful tips on inspiring your inner poet:
- Write A Cento Poem - Take your favorite lines from poems or songs and combine them in one poem to make a new poem.
- Create A Collage Poem - Cut up words and/ or sentences from magazines or newspapers. Arrange them into a poem. You can glue them to a piece of paper or save them for another collage.
- Create A Lexicon Poem - Make up about 10 words. Next write definitions for each word you make up. Then write a poem that has all those words in it. You can also add foreign words, just make sure you keep the lexicon with the poem.
- Write A List Poem - Collect about 30-40 words that remind you of a memory, relationship or a significant moment in your life. Sometimes list poems serve as a foundation or skeleton for another poem. Sometimes they are wonderful as is.
- Write 100 Lines Starting With “I Remember…” Or “I Love…” Or “I Want…” - It’s good for jogging your memory. Pick a line that stands out the most to you and write a poem start with that line.
- Let A Photo Inspire You - Describe it in detail. Make up a story about it or associate it to a moment in your life. Next, write the poem in a form you never used before; have you ever written a villanelle or a sestina?
- Translate A Poem - Take a poem that is in a foreign language and translate it with a bilingual dictionary.
- Write A Response Poem - Take a famous poem and respond to it as if it was written to you. Or write a humorous spoof of the original.
- Write An Attention Poem - Take a walk and be aware of something in particular: A color? An object? A scent? A sound? Go out with that in mind and search for it and take note of it. Be aware of all five of your senses.
- Make An Idea Folder Or Scrapbook - Collect articles, poems, word lists, interviews and ideas you’ve been meaning to try. I like to keep flash cards; some cards I write inspirational quotes, others I write down significant moments in my life, and so on.
Other Tips To Check Out:
This is somewhat related… when I was a voice major in a commercial music program, as part of an assignment I took the lyrics to one song and put them to the melody of another. It was hilarious, not to mention a good creativity catalyst.
Song lyrics are pretty much just poems put to music. Another fun thing to do is take a song you like, and make up your own words. I do this all the time at home with my kids, and it’s pretty funny. Now my four year old son even does it (he’s a poet and he doesn’t know it ;-)
JEANNE’s Last Blog Post: 1
Jeanne - one of my favorite activities is playing Mad Libs with songs - have someone else substitute the words, and see what you come up with!
This is the way things should be, get off what we are on now
Nice…I find that the “response poem” works best for me.