How to Write a Poem For Beginners

Didi Zhuang (G9)

Arts and Creativity

Published Issue 1 2022-2023

Aspiring poets and people who hate poetry! Want to write a poem? If so, this article is just for you. Though writing poetry and such can seem challenging and tedious, this article can hopefully make the steps less intimidating for you.

To start, think of a landscape, experience, or emotion. From there, relate words and correlate imagery with your idea. Usually, I find this step the hardest to achieve because it sometimes requires just a spark of motivation. But even though almost everything can spark motivation, you cannot force the motivation out.

Here is a step by step of how I formed a poem:

1. Say you want to write about happiness.

2. Then you would correlate imagery to happiness. For example, the sun is happy, the meadows are happy, the flowers are happy, the sky is happy, etc.

3. From there, the easiest thing to do is to string together a slideshow of images that follow a consistent theme.

4. Let's say the images are the sun, the meadows, and the flowers.

5. You would try and string imagery and personification as well as metaphors and such:

"The sun shines its bright visage

Meadows of spring bloom and fade

Doth the flower, its petals of pastel."

6. Then you would think of an ending that provokes thought, strings together all of the imagery, and makes the reader think about the deeper meaning.

"The sun shines its bright visage

Meadows of spring bloom and fade

Doth the flower, its petals of pastel

Does the light end with day?"

7. Usually, a rhyme is the easiest, but sometimes you can also end on a satisfying rhythm.

"The sun shines its bright visage

Meadows of spring bloom and fade

Doth the flower, its petals of pastel

Does the light end with the rain?"

8. From there, you just need an equally thought-provoking title, one that has the same amount of impact as the last line.

Ode to Daybreak

"The sun shines its bright visage

Meadows of spring bloom and fade

Doth the flower, its petals of pastel

Does the light end with the rain?"

9. Finally, you can edit some rhythm to make it flow a bit better if you wish. Examples include decreasing syllables, adding in alliteration, and so forth.

10. Congratulations, you have a poem.

Ode to Daybreak

The sun shines its bright visage

Meadows bloom and fade.

Doth the flower, petals of pastel

Does the light end with rain?