From Prose to Poetry: Discover the Poet in You

Roses are Red,

Violets are Blue,

Happy Valentine’s Day to You.

Today is about Poetry. I’m a creative writer, and as such, I needn’t limit myself to prose. Encouraged by a friend to enter two area poetry contests, each with its own theme, I’ve taken an afternoon break from the usual. 

Here, I outline a technique for turning prose into poetry. If you follow these ten steps, you too, will have a great poem. 

1. Pinpoint a section in one of your stories, articles, or essays. When you read your selected section, you shouldn’t have to second guess what it’s about. Clear and focused, we want to feel the theme (the main idea), and hear the topic (supporting sentences which directly correlate to the theme).

2. Title your poem by your theme.

3. Choose a sentence which states the topic.

4. Revise your topic sentence so it expresses a powerful idea. This will be the first line, with three to follow.

5. Find other lines from your prose which supports that idea. Revise those sentences to create three succinct statements. These will be the three lines of your poem, to follow the line from #4.

6. You should now have four lines. Skip a line. Develop another key sentence as pulled from your prose. This sentence will start the second stanza, and is the first of four lines. (In poetry rules, a stanza is a division of four or more lines.)

7. Add three more lines, same as you did in #5.

8. Repeat and add stanzas until the theme (or main idea) is brought full circle, to a closure. (No rules on how many stanzas there should be.)

9. Tinker with, and revise as needed, so that each stanza emits strong emotion, insight, or analysis. Depending on if you are working from a story, an article, or an essay, may determine if your goal is to describe, inform, or persuade.    

10. Optionally, you may revise words to elicit rhyming. However, a poem can be a poem without rhyming. Veracity expressed by your idea makes a poem.   

 If you’d like to share your poem, drop me a line.

 I’d love to hear from you. 

*All pictures on this post are by Photographer Paul Morris.

 

-Elle-