Poetry. Perhaps you’ve thought about writing it but were too shy to try. Or you tried but were put off by the idea of rules or rhyming. If so, you’re not alone. The prospect of composing a poem can strike fear into the heart of anyone who thought they’d left the subject behind at the school or college gates, filing it in a mental folder marked ‘Done and dusted’.
That could describe me. Like most people, my first foray into so-called serious poetry was at school. We studied war poets, such as Wilfred Owen and Rupert Brooke, and Shakespeare’s sonnets – not worlds I deeply related to. Sylvia Plath’s poems, filled with drama and tragedy, were a bit more appealing. And TS Eliot: well, his Jellicle Cats was definitely my bag (or Bagpuss, if you’ll excuse the pun).
Poetry was an art removed from reality – or so I thought, until I heard performers such as Jamaican-born dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson and punk poet John Cooper Clarke powerfully reciting their verse in nightclubs. So, poetry really could rock. And Maya Angelou’s rousing anthem Still I Rise remains one of the sassiest gems of feminist writing I’ve ever heard. Just one verse, from the middle, gives you an idea:
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Of course, I realise today that poetry is a broad (and wonderful) church. And writing it can be just as broad an experience: poems don’t have to rhyme, they don’t have to fit a format, vocabulary or topic. That’s the beauty of it – there’s infinite freedom to be found in poetry if you choose to embrace it. Poems don’t even need to make sense. Take Jabberwocky, by Lewis Carroll. What are ‘slithy toves’? What can ‘All mimsy were the borogoves’ possibly mean? Who cares, it’s still one of his most popular poems.
Let it flow
Gita Ralleigh is a poet, writer, NHS doctor and a teacher of creative writing. She has written two collections of poetry, A Terrible Thing and Siren, and two ‘magical middle-grade adventures’, The Destiny of Minou Moonshine and its sequel, The Voyage of Sam Singh. ‘I was very much not a poet,’ she says. ‘But seven years ago, I was working on a story and found myself hitting writer’s block, and I didn’t know what to do.’ In the end, she enrolled with the UK Poetry School – a national arts organisation offering tuition and opportunities to poets and poetry audiences – to join a workshop on writing poetry about myth and folklore: ‘My stories are concerned with those subjects, so I thought: “Why not?”’
On the course, Gita did lots of freewriting – the flow and absence of stops or self-censorship ‘seemed to completely unblock something’, she says. She naturally began searching for poems connected to India – where her parents were born – and discovered contemporary poets she loves, such as Imtiaz Dharker, a Pakistani-born British poet whose work is on the GCSE English Literature syllabus in parts of the UK. Inspired, she began to lose her fear of writing and the poetry flowed. Having experienced it herself, she is sympathetic to poetry phobia: ‘We can have so much anxiety,’ she says. ‘Am I doing it right? Does it need to have metre? Should it rhyme?’
Gita believes that a good starting point to writing poetry is to discover the kind you love to read: ‘There are so many different forms and styles of poetry out there, you’ll find what suits you.And, luckily, a lot of poetry is available free online.’
Keep it simple
What poems mean is another issue that concerns budding writers, but Gita says many examples have multiple meanings. ‘Poetry is more about asking a question than giving an answer. You can use your imagination to make it your own.’ This can also be applied to writing poetry – see Gita’s tips overleaf. Instead of focusing on meaning when reading or writing poetry, try listening to the music in the words. She points out that the lyric poem is the basis for the pop song: ‘You could say poetry is words that are made into music.’ A great example of that is in her poem Crow’s True Song.
Poetry teacher Tresha Faye Haefner also encounters many people who are afraid to write poetry, ‘even people who like to write novels and screenplays’. She believes cases of poetry jitters can stem from schooldays, because teachers often focus on the so-called greatest poems and complex ideas ‘such as the hidden meaning of God, or the true difficulty of love’. She jokes: ‘Pretty soon, you feel like you have to be WB Yeats writing The Second Coming before you can call yourself a poet.’
Tresha, founder of online community The Poetry Salon, encourages students to see that writing poetry is ‘actually quite easy’. It doesn’t have to be about esoteric ideas – it can equally be about ‘everyday truths, small happenings and fleeting human moments’.
If you’re looking for inspiration, it can be helpful to think about poetry you love. Is it the great classic Romantics, such as William Blake, Percy Bysshe Shelley or Charlotte Smith? Or funny poets, such as Edward Lear, Pam Ayres – or even, say, Doctor Seuss, whose Green Eggs and Ham is a wonderfully silly story in verse. It might be poetry from faraway lands or about nature or animals, real or fictional. Talking of which, can you guess who was behind these immortal lines?:
Isn’t it funny
How a bear likes honey?
Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!
I wonder why he does?
They could only be the reflections of a famously honey-focused Winnie-the-Pooh – being very much his own bear in verse (writer AA Milne had a bit to do with it, too). As this ‘bear of little brain’ tells his friends in The House At Pooh Corner, he finds his muse by letting things come to him: ‘Poetry and Hums aren’t things you get, they’re things which get you. And all you can do is go where they can find you.’ For Pooh, that’s anywhere there’s a sniff of some honey. Only you know where and what might be poetry-conducive for you.
Your poem doesn’t have to be long or complicated to be brilliant – it can be powerful and resonant in its brevity. The Japanese haiku is a type of short-form poetry that is unrhymed and might appear simple, but has its own special rules, including three lines and a total of just 17 syllables. Great if you like rules. If not, a poem can be short and striking, such as Margaret Atwood’s marvellous [you fit into me], the last two lines of which deliver a forceful blow:
you fit into me
like a hook into an eye
a fish hook
an open eye
In fact, a daily dose of poetry could boost your wellbeing, too, and a branch of the healing arts is dedicated to it. Poetry therapy can lift or calm your mood and ease fears, whatever your age. A 2021 US study of children in hospital found that giving them opportunities to read and write poetry reduced their fear, sadness, anger, worry and fatigue. And several studies have suggested that working with poetry can help cancer patients improve emotional resilience, alleviate anxiety levels and improve their quality of life.
Poetry’s therapeutic effects are the realm of The Reader, a charity that offers shared reading groups in all kinds of locations, including community spaces, care homes, prisons and hospitals. Says Gita of the Liverpool-based setup: ‘It may be that they have clients with dementia, and they might not look as if they’re listening, and suddenly they’ll sit up and recite the last couple of lines of a classic poem they remember from childhood, which is just lovely.’
Indeed, the power of poetry can be transformative, so what are you waiting for? If you feel an urge to get some words down on paper, pick up a pen and see where it takes you.
Gita’s top tips for writing poetry
Read. Poetry is widely accessible online. I suggest signing up to poets.org/poem-a-day, which will send a contemporary or classic poem to your inbox daily.
Listen. I love the thepoetryexchange.co.uk/podcast, where people discuss poems that have been a friend to them. They’ve also released a great anthology.
Start small. The haiku might be familiar, but what about the tanka, sijo or cinquain? Look them up online, and try using a work of art or a photograph from your phone as a starting point.
Start big. Poetry is all about compression. Sometimes it’s easier to begin with freewriting. Put on some music, take up your notebook and write whatever comes into your head for one minute. Go back and circle any lines or phrases you find interesting. Build the poem from there.
Share. Or don’t. Whatever feels comfortable. If you want a local poetry group, your local library or poetrysociety.org.uk are good places to start. Or, if you enjoy social media, start a new account to share your work.
Don’t stress. So much anxiety arises around poetry. The truth is that many poetries exist, from spoken word to contemporary to epic – you’ll find one that works.
To find out more, visit poetryschool.com, thepoetrysalon.com, thereaderonline.co.uk and thereader.org.uk. Learn more about Gita at gitaralleighauthor.wordpress.com and follow her on Instagram @gita_ralleigh