If you ask me to love,
I might fail terribly at it.
If you ask me to promise you a forever,
I would not know what to offer,
But also,
If you don’t ask for anything,
I could fly off the wings,
Oh my dear,
Do you see the irony in me yet?
All I ask of you is to,
make me fall in love with you,
make me want you forever,
make me strengthen my wings,
In all your doing,
I am pretty sure,
You’ll not even have to ask...
A specimen of refined language, poem is a representation of imagery, rhymes, acoustic symbolism.
It is simply an expression of your feelings, emotions, ideas - yet is difficult to summarise in few phrases we call stanzas.
Then, how do we do it?
Allow us to guide you through three steps of writing the poem so that you can share wonderfully crafted words that convey your feelings and capture your readers' attention for your expression...
Beginnings
Writing
Polishing
How to begin?
Read. Read. Read. I haven’t found another better teacher when it comes to art.
To become better poet, read as much poems as there are numbers.
Find your inspiration. Look for your muse.
Which is the idea that inspires you? Which thoughts make you look for answers? What do you feel like expressing? What is your pain, what is your happy place?
Look for a specific work, concept that itches your writing juices. Stick to one idea at a time which will prevent you from loosing out on the confusion in many ideas jumbled together.
Write everything.
Thoughts have easier way out of your brains but once penned to paper or on the gadget, they can’t escape easily.
Once on writing endeavour, your mind will wander across universe or capture another person's word, write it all down.
We've been putting poems on our Instagram page @seshatie, and learn it from us, most of the times, we refer our notes for a stimulus and the rest is for you to read :)
You'll, only, understand the arbitrarily written details once you look in retrospect.
How to start writing?
Either brainstorm on the idea or just freely flow the words out…
While brainstorming, pick out the central word (e.g.: from the poem above, I wanted to write on "asking to love")
Put the expressions around it (e.g.: love, asking to love forever, but you don’t really have to ask, if you love then you love, everything else you get without asking; if you force, you might just push too hard for your love to escape)
Once you have your thoughts planned out, it’s easier to start writing.
Contrary to brainstorming is writing freely. Here, you just think of the central idea (asking to love) and then start penning so that thoughts flow in as you write phrase by phrase...
While working on our youtube videos, we prefer outline, it helps envelope all the essential details. In our literary spell, all we do is let the words flow with thoughts.
Message is that, you could easily alternate between the two approaches.
How to write well?
Poem is read with heart than brains.
In my experience, hearts have simple understanding, crave connection and grasps emotions.
Use the tricks of heart to reach out to the hearts of your readers...
If your poems can create visual journey for your readers, you are on the right path.
Use imagery to express what you feel. Be sure you are not abstract - that would dull the meaning. Be concrete, that will put your message across. If you want to put across your happiness - in abstraction (I feel blessed) I don't understand your level of happiness or what it means to you. Rather, concrete portrayals help understand the poets' relevant measure of emotions (I feel like a star, singing across the sky, entertaining the wishes they hope, with closed eyes.)
Employ comparison. It will smooth your message well on the path of touching the right chords with others (In literacy terms, they are called figures of speech - simile, metaphors, alliteration, personification. When you sparingly, they help bring out the essence of the poem, decoratively)
Personify the emotions. Emotions are as abstract as humans. It is on you to conceptualise them and reach for the right heart beat. For all that,
When a poem trickles down your fingers,
in a gush of emotions that lingers,
How your heart feels is what your heart knows...
In our poetic connection,
I yearn for my heart to travel,
across the universe; finding you to ravel,
and, search for the exact pinch you feel,
be it happy, sad, aghast or heal.
My heart aches' connecting with yours!!
Structure your poem. Either give it a serious tone, or a funny one. A short or a longer one. Full of adjectives or a lighter one. Use commas or other punctuations at the right pause. In essence, decide on the message, write down your emotions and finally package it beautifully.
What is the step before announcing the poem complete?
Poems are a food for ears.
They should soothe the ears than most other senses. Read it again and again, until the poem rings all the bells of your ears.
If you must ask, ask for feedback than anything else...
I always follow the rule of blur, first ask from familiar souls (they partially know you to connect with what you want to convey), once passed that, reach out to people who don't know you more than your name (they owe you nothing and will roughen up those missed edges). Finally, reach out to at least two strangers and ask for their opinion (here, will be your final review of whether the words you wanted to convey has reached their ears and all the way to heart or not.)
Forget about your poem, for a few days
So that you can come back to it with fresh mind, edit it needed and your poem is now ready :)
Lastly, we'd say, just write.
The best reward is your feedback to us. We are waiting for the your message to ping us happy...:):):)
You can also subscribe to our newsletters and connect with us on seshatiewords@gmail.com for anything creative...
Start writing, dear. That's how we all begin.
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