I figure if you’re here at Trish’s website, you must write poems or care about poetry. Me too, three bags full, and yet sometimes I’ve wondered if we poets aren’t a little bit like salmon—working our fins off just trying to hold our places in the current, building […]
We can use persona poetry techniques to write memoires. Technically, memoir poetry is not persona poetry, because in persona poetry, the poet and the speaker are different people. It is a bit like ghostwriting. We want to preserve the feeling that it’s true to the person’s voice, even […]
Poetry and Memoir writing are traditionally thought of as different kinds of writing but a mash-up can be very successful. One way to use poetry in memoir writing is to think like a memoirist but write like a poet. Organize the poems with a theme, paying attention to […]
April 2022 marks the 26th annual celebration of poets and poetry and it’s not too late to make a plan for poetry month! Whether you want to sign up to write a poem a day or unofficially just plan to crank out some poetry in April, there are […]
The Sejong Cultural Society is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization founded in Chicago, IL in 2004. They are currently open for no fee entries for their Sejong Writing Competition for essays and sijo poetry. The sijo is a traditional three-line Korean poetic form organized technically and thematically by line […]
Last month at my poetry reading in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the bookstore owner introduced me with an anecdote. He described an open-mic regular who summoned the courage to read because he realized that “everyone’s got something to say.” I recalled the summer in my early 20s when […]
Are you feeling stuck? Is your muse off flirting with other authors? Do idle pens and pencils and blank pages fill you with guilt? Do you have a bad case of what we commonly call “Writers Block”? Well, oddly enough, it is a description that does not apply […]
Most sequels aren’t better than (or even as good as) the first of something, I agree. But re-inventions very well might be. For instance, the Christopher Nolan Batman movies are better the two by Tim Burton, and if you don’t like the reboot of the Star Trek movies […]
April 2021 marks the 25th annual celebration of poets and poetry and it’s not too late to make a plan for poetry month! Whether you want to sign up to write a poem a day or unofficially just plan to crank out some poetry in April, there are […]
It might be self-defeating to say this, but you should know it going in: My poet friend Jesse Parent has a list poem about why he doesn’t like List Poems. That’s pretty funny, and it shows you that not everyone is into this form. But I am, and […]
