Hello, lovelies! A few weeks ago, I did A THING: I wrote a poem. In fact, I wrote three! It was weird and wonderful and a bit scary (because who am I to think that I can just DO that). Oh, and my poems were then recited by a Dutch musical star in front of 1000 people. Jeez Louise, the audacity of it all 😉

Sarcasm and jokes aside: I’m super grateful for the experience (and for having so many people hear my words). Still, I don’t consider myself a poet. I’m a fiction writer, and I will always be that. BUT, looking back at my brief adventure outside of the Shire: I did learn a lot from trying my hand at poetry!

Poetry Is the Art of Saying More with Less

To my surprise, writing poetry transformed the way I approach writing: I’ve come to look at poetry as storytelling in a super concise format. Poetry is the art of saying more with less!

Writing poetry has forced me to look at the world around me in a new, more creative way: I had to actively think about the everyday things in my life and how they made me feel. How I could express these ordinary concepts in extraordinary ways—not just for the sake of brevity, but also to ensure my words impacted the reader in a way that was honest and true and wonderous?

Perhaps more than any other genre, poetry can paint a vivid picture in the reader’s mind. Poetry can breathe life into the abstract, make the indefinable clear and concrete, show the beauty in the every day, and embrace emotions that can be hard to put into words otherwise. BUT one must ensure that every word matters, and each sentence has a purpose.

When writing poetry, one must pay meticulous attention to the words one chooses—and the images, feelings, and emotions those words inherently call forth. It is a never-ending lesson on how to perfectly capture a moment, a feeling, or an image.

As a result, in my current WIP, I’ve become more careful about the words I choose and the picture those words create. I’ve also become more intentional in the way I put my sentences together and I try to strip away the “noise” that is caused by using too many (unnecessary) words.

I’ve also found that writing a short poem as an introduction to a much longer piece of text helps me get a better understanding of what I want the text to say. Writing a brief introductory poem challenges me to tell my story in a hyper-condensed way, using carefully crafted language that evokes the images, feelings, and emotions that I want the reader to experience when they are reading my story.

In the future, I’d like to experiment with this further: I’d like to create a poem for each of my WIP’s three acts. I firmly believe this can help me convey the story’s essence in a more meaningful way—even if the poems never end up in the story.