Wrote this yesterday morning in bed in a notebook, then I got up, went for a swim, had breakfast, went to the station to pick up my daughter, then she took me out for a birthday treat and I never got back to the laptop so it’s a day late. I’ll try and write another one later today.
How to Write a Poem
This is what happens:
I have a thought.
The words form a pattern
and fall into rhythm.
(I don’t do rhymes;
that’s far too tricky.)
They tinkle like crystal
or pound like hoofbeats,
and there they are,
they bounce through my head
and lead me onward.
Mostly it’s like this:
the good old iambic,
the stress and the rest
follow after each other.
Sometimes they stretch out
if I’m feeling more reflective.
I don’t often edit
or search for the right words,
it’s not really worth it.
I just let them happen,
these throwaway ditties,
but some people like them.
Somebody asked me:
‘What makes it a poem
and not something else?’
The question confused me.
What else could it be?
It’s rarely a story,
not exactly an essay,
just thinking in rhythm.
Bite-sized stream-of-consciousness,
snapshots of my psyche,
windows on my mind.
And that’s what makes a poem.
Linda Rushby 7 April 2022
Southsea Storytellers 
Isn’t it great when poems grace us with their presence. I absolutely love the lines, “tinkle like crystal / or pound like hoofbeats”. So true of the scope of poetry.
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Thanks LuAnne. It’s the only way I write. Sometimes I’ll go back later and tweak them a bit, but I have to get the spark, and I don’t really know how to make it happen.
I used to write and blog every day, but things never seemed to be going anywhere, I just kept going back over the same old themes. so last year I gave up. But I decided to jump back into NaPo and see what happens, figuring that I can probably drag out a poem a day! 😉 This is the fourth year I’ve done this (I started small in 2018 with Haikus!) and I never know if I’m going to last the course, but so far so good! 😉
Linda
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