What a Great Idea for a Poem!

Lots of people starting out with poetry want to know how poets come up with their ideas. If only there was a simple answer to that!

For me, the topic came first, and then the form. I wanted to write about a health crisis in my family, just to vent, and what came out were poems. Not great poems! But definitely of a kind of poetic form.

Gradually over the past several years, poetry has become the magnifying glass through which I look at the entire world and all of its issues, large or small. A ladybug scuttling across a leaf? That could be a great poem topic. Despair over the lives of children living in refugee camps? Another great poem topic. Love the way “hurdle” and “turtle” sound together? Maybe you can build a silly poem around a turtle who wants to run track! Hey, I like that idea.

Anyway, in an effort to express where some of my ideas come from, I decided to keep track yesterday of the things I noticed that made me think: What a great idea for a poem! There aren’t that many, just 6.

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