Azouz

Student: BENOTMANE Mamatiti / Group 4

Ms: AZOUZ Samia
Writing 2nd Year
December, 16th 2013

Just Hold Your Pen and Start Writing

Writing poem is about expressing ideas and thoughts that come up
to your mind, or feelings and emotions that flood from your heart. There
are many and different things you are going to write your poem about,
love, nature, family, friendship, or politics. Choosing one subject depends
on the goal you are setting and you want your reader to know it and agree
with. There are many different ways how to write a poem, but you have
always to find the correct way that shows the right progressing
instructions in order to create a complete and effective poem, that would
be easy to be read and understood. Here are the steps how to get started.
Firstly, find the spark. What is meant here by spark is a small idea
you can write it down and later your poem will be developed around. To
find your spark, you should begin with gathering and collecting variety of
books of poetry by different authors. The first line you see in each poem
you read, try to write it down, and dont search of the best line or the best
expression in those poems. Write those lines in separate piece of paper,
and try to order them into a coherent poem. This might give you an idea
about your own poem you are going to write about. Then, anything comes

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to your mind about the idea, you have to write it down. Give the chance to
your ideas and thoughts to be expressed in words. Also, you have to be
honest in showing your feelings while writing your poem. Emotions are the
soul, and they are what create the poem. All the emotions that you feel
when you are going to start, write them down as quickly as possible. After
that, some views and scenery may inspire your imagination to write your
poem. For example, try to visit a park, a forest, or any natural place, this
will help you to develop your lines of your own poem. Dont look for
perfection, this is going to come with practicing.
Secondly, read and listen to poetry. Reading classic poems or
listening to audible ones may evolve your poetry work. Try to attend clubs
of poetry in your neighbourhood or some events made by associations, or
to meet professional people in this field who may guide you and give you
some instructions and advices. Without forgetting, try to look out for the
lyrics of your favourite songs you enjoy to listen. You will more enjoy
reading them, and you will discover many interesting ideas and
expressions.
Additionally, think about the goal or the point you want to achieve
with your poem. Goals differ with the subject you want to write about. You
can write about love to express your felling through some one, you can
write about sadness or grief to express your sympathise with some ones
tragic event, or even you can write about an idea you want to convince
people with. Think about why you are writing your poem and the audience

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to whom you are writing. This may help in finding the appropriate words
and expressions to use.
Further more, Choose the right words. It has been said, A novel is
words in best order, but a poem is best words in best order. Figure out all
the words you want to use as building blocks to your poem. Try to classify
them according to the words that if they are fitted together, they would
make a perfect structure, and to those if they are fitted together, they will
not make a perfect one. Keep working on that until you have built a strong
structure of words. Then, use only the necessary words, and those that
strength the meaning of the poem. Also, find similar sounding wards or
synonyms, for instance like, for sounding words: day / way / stay, and for
synonyms: winter = fall / feelings = emotions. This can lead to interesting
word play.
Along with, use a concrete imagery and vivid description. A concrete
imagery is an image or a passage that can be received and felt by our
senses while we are reading it, and a vivid description is that descriptive
passage that we can interact with. Your poem should appeal or address to
the senses to help the reader become more immersed and concentrated in
the text. Emotions such as love, hate, happiness, or sadness are abstract
concept; it means that they are emotions that we cannot realize with
senses. Mostly all poems are instructed with abstractions, and its hardly
to build a poem using only abstractions. As a solution, try to replace or to
strength those abstractions using concrete images which are things
appreciated with our senses, such as, rose, sea, tree, fire, or wind. To give

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your poem a value, while using the concrete images, you can describe
them vividly. Show your readers what you are talking about, put them on
the scenery, and make them live and experience the poem you are
writing. Use sensory words; words that can describe things that you hear,
see, test, touch, and smell.
Next step, use poetic devices to enhance your poems beauty and
meaning. A poetic device is a poem invented for a particular purpose. The
most well known poetic device is rhyme. The poetic devices include:
1-Metaphor: an expression that involves figures of speech or symbolism
and does not literally represent real things. For example:

The wind

is now
A roaring, smashing
Monster of destruction
Star fields Peace
*As you notice here, wind is not a monster in real, but the poet resembles
the wind to a monster in order to express how the wind was violent and
strong.
2-Alliteration: using several words that begin with the same or similar
consonants. For example: Around the rock the ragged rascal ran
3-Assonance: the similarity of two or more vowel sounds, or the repetition
of two or more consonant sounds. For example:

Once

upon

midnight dreary
While I pondered weak and weary
4-Repetition: the repeated use of the same word or word pattern as
rhetorical device. Fro example:
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes

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There will be time, there will be time
Not to forget, poetic device can help you to build a poem, but using them
a lot can ruin it.
Even more, use someone elses line. You can take a line from a poem
of a person and make it the first line in your poem. This somehow will give
a value to your poem and show your readers that you are interested and
open minded on others poems.
Moreover, add a turn to the end of the poem. A turn is a moment
in a poem when the tone dramatically changes, usually to draw an
inspected conclusion, introduce a conflict or new perspective, or tell the
moral or the story. Turns usually come near the end of the poem and rarely
introduced with a word like but. They are great way to give the end of
your poem a sense of closure for dramatic effect. Give the reader
something to think about, something to dwell on after reading your poem.
Before the last, edit your poem. After doing all the previous steps
and when the basic poem is written, put it a side for awhile, we can say
forget about it for some time. Then, read the poem out loud to your self.
Go through it deeply, and balance the choice of words and their structure,
take out the unnecessary ones, also, you can replace the concrete imagery
or develop it to a better one and make it more vivid. Some people edit
their poem all a once; once they finish writing it, they start to modify and
edit it, while others come back to it again after awhile. If you find some
parts of the poem are not perfect and are not working, just replace them
because maybe the new parts are more appropriate and suitable.

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Finally, share your work. This can be the second part of editing your
poem. Critiquing your poem is important though it may seem hard to do
that. So, after you have done with the initial edit, try to get some friends,
poetry group, or professional people in this field to look at your poem for
you. There will be many, different suggestions, and they may be effective
or passive, but you might find some insight that will make your poem
better. So, feedback is important and good more than bad. Pass your poem
around, and ask your friends to critique your work, and the most important
is that they have to be honest in doing that. Also, offer to critique the
others work. Offering someone else feedback on their work can help you
to develop a critical eye, which you can apply to your own work. By the
way, do not share your work with people who dont appreciate the poetry.
This is a mistake that can discourage you from being a poet. The best
thing to do is to ask someone supportive and who appreciates the art of
written word to kindly critique your work.
To sum up, following the previous detailed steps about how to write a
poem, finding a spark, reading and listening to poetry, thinking about what
you want to achieve with the poem, choosing the right words, using poetic
devices, adding a turn, and editing and sharing your poem will help you
to write a complete meaningful piece of poem made by your own ideas
and structure.