15 Inspiring Reasons To Start Writing Poetry

Discover 15 inspiring reasons to start writing poetry, from boosting creativity and experimentation to strengthening your voice and improving your overall writing skills.

Why should you write poems?

Because they’re awesome, but also because poetry is even more condensed than the short story. I find writing poems challenging, and they make me approach writing differently.

15 Inspiring Reasons To Start Writing Poetry

They also:

1. Allow you to brainstorm. Because the medium differs from stories, poems allow you to express things differently. Use them to brainstorm ideas.
2. Make your words work. Even more than the short story, poems have limited words, and we need to make our words work hard.
3. Make you think differently about words. Poems make us re-evaluate words and think of new ways to manipulate language.
4. Make you evaluate each word, because the condensed nature of a poem means we have to spend even more time evaluating our word choice.
5. Allow you to say exactly what it is you want to say. Poems act as a filter and help us get to the guts of the matter.
6. Have rules, but they also have no rules. You get to break all the rules when you write poems but do it only because it serves the poem. Manipulate grammar, change the sentence structure.
7. Allow you to experiment and experiment some more. Have fun.
8. Have many places to submit. The only thing there is more of on the internet than short story competitions and submissions are poetry sites. Dig in.
9. Are even quicker to write. A poem can take a few minutes and just spill out or it can take years.
10. Give you a break from fiction, because it is such a different medium.
11. Give you deadlines, deadlines, and more deadlines. Find them online, sign up here, but get going.
12. Make you more aware of how words and sentences sound, which will improve your fiction.
13. Give you an opportunity to learn by reading and commenting on other poems.
14. Help you learn from the comments and feedback from other poets.
15. Help you express emotion and feelings. Poems are supposed to make you feel something even if you don’t understand them. They help you get feelings out.

It is true that many of these are applicable of all writing, but I hope that I have convinced you that poems are valuable. These 15 reasons to write poetry should inspire you. It would be awesome if you would like to join us for this new adventure on the 12 Poems Challenge.

Read my Poetry 101 Series:

1. Poetry 101: What Is A Poem?
2. Poetry 101: How To Analyse A Poem
3. Poetry 101: Creating Figurative Language Using Literary Devices
4. Poetry 101: Kinds Of Poems – The Sonnet
5. Poetry 101: Kinds Of Poems – The Haiku
6. Poetry 101: Kinds Of Poems – Free Verse
7. Poetry 101: Kinds Of Poems – The Limerick
8. Poetry 101: Kinds Of Poems – The Villanelle
9. Poetry 101: Kinds Of Poems: The Ballad

by Mia Botha

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