Creative Poetry Exercises

I recently "stumbleupon'd" a list of creative exercises that you can do to practice writing poetry, so I thought I would try it. Advance warning: I am not a poet. The last poem I remember writing was in lower school when we had to write about things we loved, so I wrote about rainbows, candy, and chocolate. And my family, I think.

Here is the link to the site that I found.

English 50 – Intro to Creative Writing: Exercises for Poets


Your First Lines


1. The King James Bible has long been recognized for its importance to English literature. Choose a verse from the Bible and write your own poem with the Bible verse as the first line. You can use the blank verse of the Bible as a basis for developing rhythm, the subject matter of the verse to develop theme and metaphor.

(I used my favorite verse for this one, Romans 5:20)

But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound,

And so everybody enjoyed a few minutes of grace

And they saw that God did love everyone,

And everyone loved everybody else.

And you finally saw real peace

Right up until Romans 6.

Then it left again.

2.  Take a line from someone else's poem, presumably one you admire, and use it as the first line for your own poem, again adapting rhythm, subject matter, metaphor.

(line taken from "Resquiescat," by Oscar Wilde)

Heap earth upon it

So that they grow deep

And stretch their weak limbs

Into rifts of the

Dark earthy soil,

Saturated, ripe.

Ready to surge up,

With torrents of buds,

They rise, sing, swell, burst

Flooding the ruin

And dust and decay

So nothing is dead,

No, not anymore.

3. Take a sentence or phrase from a novel or short story or essay that you think is striking and make it the first sentence of a poem. 

(Line from Silence of the Lambs, Thomas Harris)

Some of our stars are the same

If not the time of day,

Or the temperature outside,

Or the lunches we had yesterday,

Or the race of our parents

Or the color of our hair

Or the languages we speak

Or the fountains of knowledge we possess

(And our pearls of wisdom)

Or where we are today

Or where we will be tomorrow.

And if you are on the other side of the world

Our stars are not the same,

But go outside

When it's clear

And dark

And look at the moon.

I see it, too.

4. Look in your journal for a line or striking image and make it the first line of a poem. Don't forget to consider lines and phrases from letters you've received, email messages, phrases you're heard in conversations, movies, songs, anything to get started. If the poem goes well, you'll end up dropping the "borrowed" first line.

Twenty years and twenty days later,

I found myself sitting and writing

Second-rate poetry

On a blog that has eleven followers

And I wondered where I will be in twenty years and twenty days from now

Once my lifespan has doubled,

Or forty years and forty days from now.

And I got scared.

I then remembered how, yesterday (a Sunday),

I woke up at eight in the morning

And took the bus to the grocery store

And then I brought my groceries home and put them in the fridge,

And then took the bus to work,

And I felt a little better.