Learning to Write Poems

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Laura Turner and today we're going to talk about learning to write poems. There are many different ways in which you can learn to write. The very first thing that you might want to do of course is just attempt it yourself and to see how much you can do yourself without having any other input. But if you're really serious about it you should probably just go ahead and take a poetry class and really see if this is what you want to do. Okay. So number one, take a class. Number two, read lots of other poems by other poets. And discover through reading you know what kinds of poems you really like. For example I really like Victorian poetry and I took a very extensive class on it in undergrad and I have this very big book of Victorian poets so I can actually go back, you know, look at Tennison and everything he's written. And really think about you know what is it about these poets that I enjoy and how can I emulate them, and what do they write about and how do they write. So read lots of poems and figure out what you like about them and try to emulate what they do. You know try your hand at writing and once you have actually written your poem, actually have others read it, get feedback from them. Go back and rewrite it. And then have - read it aloud because part of being a poet is being able to read your poetry to other people and sort of give an interpretation through yourself. So make sure that you enjoy reading your poetry aloud to others or this might not be the correct path for writing for you, maybe you ought to go and try to do fiction or something like that. Though in fiction you might also be asked to read your fiction aloud, so practice with these things with taking classes, reading poems, trying your hand at writing and having others read and you reading it yourself, okay. So those are just some tips for learning to be a poet."