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By Ingrid Adams

So often in writing we become overwhelmed in picking the right words to describe how we’re feeling when facing intense and important moments.  Writing poetry may feel like therapy and in fact it may serve as such for you as well as your readers.

Here’s six tips which may be helpful for you while writing poetry during such situations:

Tip #1 :  Give It Time –  If your pain is too fresh you are likely to end up pushing your emotions on your readers. Take the time you need to process your thoughts and feelings first.  You must trust your readers and let your writing take them through your emotion.

Tip #2  : Be Careful When Using Figurative Language – Don’t overload your poetry with lots of metaphors and similes.  You want you reader to know how you feel. There’s no need to  confuse or baffle your reader by including too many  overused cliché’s.

Tip #3  : Let Objects Activate Painful Themes – Using objects to explain your deepest emotions can be very effective. Your readers can relate to your writing by comparing them to the familiar processes experienced through life such as how grass withers and how flowers decay.  

Tip #4  : Describe Feelings That Are Surprising – It’s a fact that we all experience human emotions on a daily basis but at our most painful or troubling moments in life we are not just experiencing one feeling but are flooded with lots of surprising emotions at the same time. It’s your job as a writer/poet to be attentive to that. Most of the time the major emotion is obvious but often the best approach is to focus on the unexpected thought, emotion or complex feeling.

Tip#5  :  Let Your Character Be Complicated – It’s O.K. if your poetry contains thoughts that are complicated because sometimes life becomes complicated. The complication is what sometimes drives us to write and let your poetry become a release of those thoughts, feelings and emotions.

Tip#6  : Keep The Actual Crying To A Minimum – It’s O.K. to include the thoughts of shedding a tear or experiencing a tearful moment but too much crying may be over kill. Choose your words wisely. Become creative when expressing such grief and your poetry will become more effective.

There’s a lot of value in writing about painful emotions. Your job through the use of writing poetry is to express those thoughts and emotions with eloquence, grace and style. Are you up for the challenge?

© Ingrid Adams 2024