What is poetry?
To me, poetry is not words strung together
But the moments melting in silence.
Poetry is not a piece of sheet,
But the indescribable feelings our hearts hold.
Poetry is not word-painting a rosy picture,
But the stories that stay hidden in the depths of our hearts.
A moment of whispered ‘I LOVE YOU”
The touch that speaks more than a million words
A gaze that sings the song of love
The excitement in awaiting the dear’s arrival
A time when eyes and lips speak the same language
The incredible moment of waking next to yours
A simple magnetic handhold
And the words drowned in a warm embrace.
This is poetry.
Beautiful unwritten poetry.
Poetry 101
It’s a dream for many writers to write beautiful poetry. Not every writer is the same. Some are talented story writers, some poets, while some write captivating blogs. Nevertheless, a writer is a writer.
Poetry doesn’t have to be a dream.
You can write poems if you put your mind to it. The above poem is my recent one. Unedited. The first draft. It still needs polishing but I want to share the unedited version.
With this as an example, I want to teach a few techniques and poetic devices to help you write poetry. I will share three poetic devices and a simple technique to get started.
First, let’s see the technique in our poetry 101.
The most difficult thing is to get the words onto the paper. That is the first and most difficult step in writing poetry. Like I said above, the most beautiful poems are inside our hearts. It is may not always seem the same on paper. But you gotta keep trying.
The problem is we try to write beautifully right from the beginning and doing so, you will find your mental image doesn’t quite sync with your result. This can be highly demotivating.
So don’t compare.
Your first goal has to be only getting words onto the paper. Write whatever you’re feeling and the apt words that describe it.
Tip: Don’t worry about rhyming and rhythm if you’re a beginner.
Once you’ve written everything that you wanted, you can move to the second step. Polishing.
Re-order the words and phrases in the right manner. In however way you want it to be. It will take a few attempts to figure it out so keep doing it until you’re satisfied with the result.
Poetry 101: Poetic Devices
Well, there are myriads of poetic devices you can learn and use in your poetry. For now, I’d like to share three of them.
- Alliteration
This helps in adding a certain rhythm to your poems. Alliteration means the beginning letter or sound of two or more words is the same. For instance, wicked witch.
In the case of my poem, ‘moments melting’ and ‘sings the song.’
- Personification
It means giving human traits to non-living things. For example, in my poem, I said ‘gaze that sings’ and ‘touch that speaks.’ That’s personification.
- Rhyming
I don’t have to say much about rhyming, we already know plenty about it. But a suggestion I can give is don’t be too worried about rhyme. And definitely don’t think it is poetry only when it rhymes.
Take the help of Google if you’re struggling to find the right rhyming words. That’s all. You’re good to go.
Hope this guide to poetry 101 helps you.
I’ll see you another time. Until then, keep writing.
Cheers,
Nikki.
Thanks for reading