Bless me oh poetry gods, for I have sinned. I gave my poem a boring, abstract title that even made me lose interest in it. How many poems have you seen with a title like ‘Love’, ‘Justice’, or ‘Morning’? Your brain is left scrambling even before you dive into the poem. It may set up expectations your poem doesn’t deliver. Worst of all is the dreaded, ‘Untitled’. Not only does it miss an opportunity to…
by Elya Braden, Assistant Editor While many of us have been to enough poetry workshops over the years to assemble a notebook or, in my case, several notebooks of poetry prompts, one trick I’ve especially enjoyed from one of my favorite writing teachers, Tresha Faye Haefner, creator of The Poetry Salon, is that of creating your own poetry prompts. I’ve participated in many workshops where the only prompt is a particular poem or maybe a…
Revising your poetry. You’ve got a notebook (computer) full of finished poems and wonder “What comes next?” Do you slap the results in an email and rush to submit them far and wide? Or do you carefully revise your work, and create the strongest poems possible? Revising poetry is the way to go, more so now that I know the depth of my not knowing. It’s a rare poem that can make the leap from…
I’ve been re-reading Women Poets: From Antiquity to Now by Aliki Barnstone and Willis Barnstone. It’s an interesting collection ranging from a lone Sumerian poet through Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Persian, Indian, African, Chinese, Japanese, European, Native American poets, and even one translated Egyptian Hieroglyph poem. The time span ranges from about 2300 BC to poets born in the 1950s. The range of voices is fascinating. Although hundreds and sometimes thousands of years separate the poets…
