Caution, This Demonstration May Be A Failure

How To Improve Your Poetry -From a Top Writer in Poetry

a double row of colored-pencils-1056398_1280nby skeeze from Pixabay

I was excited to receive Top Writer status in Poetry on Medium this year. I enjoy writing poetry, but it wasn’t always my strong point. I used to write policy for a large financial institution. That might seem a bit odd at first, but clear concise writing that conveys the main message was always my goal.

I bring that to my writing here.

I’m going to walk you through my process, with a real-life demonstration of how I write a poem.

But there are no guarantees.

A few comments before we get started:

Edit mercilessly.

That’s my secret. Truly. That’s my main technique.

I spend quite a bit of time on each poem, removing words that don’t need to be there.

And then I go back and remove some more.

How to Begin?

Often my poems begin with an emotional rant. Something will spark my ego or ping my heart. I want to do something about it or say something, so I open a Word document and just type.