Write the first draft of a poem, and have fun doing it!

This writing session has three parts:

• a ten-minute warm-up exercise
• a brief examination of a model poem
• a 25-minute write to craft your poem

The entire session takes about an hour to complete. 

You'll use the material from your warm-up exercise and a few of the craft elements discovered in the model poem to write your first draft.

Intro & Warm-up Exercise

Spaciousness and Silence

Before we jump into the warm-up exercise, I want to briefly explore the role that spaciousness and silence play in poetry.

I'll start with a quote from Billy Collins: “Someone said, and I think this is very true, that you can judge the quality of the poem by the intensity of the silence that exists after you finish reading it” (from Conversations with Billy Collins).
  
Wendell Berry speaks about silence in his poem “How to Be a Poet.”
  
 I’ll just share the last paragraph:

Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.  
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers  
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

It's a signal that we're in the vicinity of poetry when we begin to feel that silence.
  
So, how do we get from a blank page to a poem?
  
We’re looking for a way in, a way to say something that will provide an experience not only for our readers but for ourselves.
  
How do we find our way into building or creating an experience? We’re going to start by writing a simple list.
  
Set yourself up in a nice writing spot. Make yourself as comfortable as possible. If you can write in front of a window or outside, even better. In my experience, being surrounded by nature makes it easier to get in touch with something more essential.
  
Set a timer for 10 minutes and write a list of 10 or so places you’d recommend to a friend. Aim to keep each item on your list a short fragment.
  
For example: 1. The condo on Gulf Shores.

When you’ve written out your list, proceed to the next section. 

Model Poem & Craft Elements

You're going to write a first draft of a poem. But before you do, I’m going to share our model poem, “Postscript,” and then look at some of the craft elements you might use in your poem.

Postscript

by Seamus Heaney 

And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you’ll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

Craft Elements

How does Heaney land us in this new place at the end? How does he transport us to this new psychological state? He uses a metaphor.

It feels as if the “big soft buffetings… catch the heart off guard and blow it open." (But the speaker doesn’t admit to the comparison, so it's a metaphor, not a simile.)

You'll also notice that the first eleven lines in "Postscript" are spent describing the location. It's only in lines 12 to 14 that he reflects upon the place:

Useless to think you’ll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass

Then the second last line goes back to description: "As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways".

And the last line shows how this moment affects him: "And catch the heart off guard and blow it open."

Write Your First Draft

Write your first draft using these four simple steps:

1. Set a timer for 25 minutes.
      
2. Choose one of the items on your list from the warm-up exercise, one of the places you’d recommend to a friend, and describe the place. It can be a challenge to just keep focusing on description because we want to make something of it, but keep trusting in the description as Heaney does.
     
3. When you run out of things to describe, briefly take a moment to reflect on the place. (Write maybe three or so lines.)
     
4. For your last few lines, describe something again and use a metaphor to show how it affects you.

In an interview, Mary Oliver said that writing poetry is “a gift to yourself, but it’s [also] a gift to anybody who has a hunger for it.” 

So, find a cozy spot to write. Follow these steps and see where they lead you!