7 Hacks of Writing a Poem!

If you have ideas and want to express them through poetry, then you must want to know how to craft a mind-blowing poem.

I bet you want to write expressive poetry that will portray your feelings and emotions to your readers and can leave a lasting impact on their hearts.

So, let’s discuss the hacks for creating mind-blowing poetry.

Hacks of Writing a Poem:

• Craft an Idea for Poetry:

The first step or major hack of writing poetry is to have an idea or topic in your mind. You should know on which topic you want to express your emotions or thoughts.

To find an amazing poem idea, you should read different poems on various topics. Various blogs discuss different poetry topics and give you prompts for writing a poem. Learn more about the blogs and poetry topics to select your topic.

You can also get the poetry idea by observing nature, and the people around you. Important life or social events will give you topics for writing.

• Freewriting:

Freewriting or journaling will help you in writing a poem. After deciding on a topic, take a blank paper and write whatever came to your mind. Use expressive words, phrases, and themes coming into your mind.

In this activity, you shouldn’t think about poetic language or rhythm. You just keep writing, and after doing this activity for almost 15-20 minutes, you should read whatever you have written, and select the phrases and words you want to add to your poem.

• Think about the Form:

You can decide about your poetic form either before writing or during the editing phase. But, it is better to select a form before writing as it will help you to craft an expressive poem with ease.

You can select whether you want to write a sonnet, haiku, or a free verse poem. If you will select a form before writing, you can craft a poem by remaining within the constraints of a form.

• Use Poetic Devices:

There are various poetic devices that you should use in a poem to have a rhythm and solid expressions in it.

Some popular poetic devices are similes, metaphors, images, rhymes, meter, and concrete words. 

Similes and metaphors will help you in comparing, suggesting, adding inference, and expressing your theme to your audience.

Concrete words will help your audience to feel and have the imagination of scenes in their minds. That’s why you should replace all of your abstract words with concrete ones.

You should use rhymes and meters carefully so that your poem doesn’t feel like a song. So, it is recommended to have a free verse in the beginning. 

But if you want to have a specific form of poetic writing, you should read different poems of that form so that you can have an idea of how to write the poem of that form.

• Avoid Clichés:

Your poem should be an ordinary and unique piece of writing so that your readers can relate to it. For this, it is recommended to avoid every type of cliché at every cost.

Clichés can be common or repetitive phrases, themes, storylines, or character types. These are some repetitive similes and metaphors too.

For example, if your romantic poetry has character types, storylines, emotions, and phrases similar to the majority of poems, then your readers will never love to read your poem till the end. Your poem will get dull for them.

So, use an original idea, or uniquely explain the characters and emotions in your poem.

• Write Beginning and End:

The beginning and end of the poem is a crucial thing as it leaves a mark on your reader.

That first line can be the title of your poem, can be a scene, can be a conflict, or start with a contradiction. Similarly, the end line can give the conclusion, or end a cycle.

Do mind storming here, and try different literary devices to craft a memorable beginning and conclusion.

• Edit:

As chocolate biscuit cakes are imperfect without a chocolate topping, your poem is also imperfect without editing.

After writing your poem, it is best to leave it for some days before editing it. Here, you should keep in mind that your poem doesn’t need to be grammatically correct or perfect. In editing, you just have to read your poem to know whether it is conveying the idea or not

For editing, you can read aloud your poem to know how it sounds. If you want, you can share your poem with your friends too. Their feedback will help you in making your writing better

Conclusion:

These are some hacks for writing a poem that will not only help you to write a poem for yourself, but also to become a professional poet, and make poetry writing your side hustle.