Poetry Writing Exercises for the Senses
When you engage your readers’ senses by exploring taste, touch, sound, sight, and smell in your writing, you create a visceral image and give your readers something they can connect with on a physical level.
Have you ever read a passage that described a delicious meal and suddenly realized you were hungrily salivating?
Our senses are even more powerful than our cognitive memories. Mention the smell of someone smoking a pipe, the scent of freshly baked cookies, or the odor of a barnyard, and suddenly these aromas magically fill the air.
You can use the phenomena of the senses to make your poetry come alive.
Writing Poetry that Captivates
Great poetry pulls a reader out of his or her current reality and takes them to another place – even if only for an instant. A well-written poem creates a snapshot of a scene, event, or situation and draws the reader inside.
One of the first things that novice poets learn is the power of imagery. Once you can create compelling images in your poetry, you need to find a way to get your readers to step inside those images. Music does this by coupling storytelling with sound. Surely, you’ve gotten lost inside a song – completely swept away by the melody and cadence. Poetry can do the same thing, but without instruments, poets must use language to engage the senses and lure a reader into the scene.
The five senses are:
- Sight
- Touch
- Taste
- Sound
- Smell
Three Sensory Poetry Writing Exercises
The following poetry writing exercises start with the simple task of bringing sensory perception into your poetry writing, but then become more challenging by asking you to go beyond images that provoke the senses. You’ll actually step inside the senses themselves, and the results will be far more dynamic.
Each of the poetry writing exercises below can be completed for each of the five sentences. Try one or try them all. Have fun with this exercise, and be sure to check out the tips at the end for some extra insight.
- 1. Engage the Senses
- Write a poem that uses one or more of the senses to captivate the reader. Choose phrases and images that are highly descriptive and have extremely strong references to the senses. As a bonus challenge, try to include all five senses in a single poem.
- 2. Dancing Around the Senses
- Write a poem that evokes the sensations of one or more of the five senses without using nouns or verbs that are directly related to the senses themselves. Think about how the word “boom” tickles your ears just a little bit and you’ll get the idea. Examples of words to avoid: smell, scent, aroma, odor, taste, touch, feel, sight, see, view, hear, listen, etc.
- 3. Be Sensible
- Write as the sense itself. In other words, you are sound. What do you have to say to the world? You can personify the senses or think of them as a metaphor for something else so that you can step into their characters. This one is difficult, so you might try being simple and specific to start with. For example, instead of writing from the perspective of sound, write as if you are music.
Bonus Poetry Writing Tips
The poetry exercises above will help you build a piece that goes beyond imagery. You’ll create a scene, complete with all the sensations of reality. Here are a few extra tips to keep in mind as you work through these poetry writing exercises:
- Avoid clichés or any phrases that feel overused. No fresh scents, delicious tastes, or soft touches. Try to come up with ideas and images that are original.
- Show, don’t tell. This reinforces the use of imagery. Don’t say “the dog’s barking makes my ears hurt.” Instead, say “The dog shrieks.”
- Use a thesaurus to find adjectives and adverbs that are compelling and uncommon. Better yet, forgo adjectives and adverbs in exchange for more descriptive nouns and verbs. Instead of “bad smell” use “stink.” Trade phrases like “listening carefully” for words like “enthralled.”
If you try any of these poetry writing exercises, then post yours in the comments, especially if your poem is fairly short. If you publish one of these on your blog or website, be sure to leave a link in the comments.
If you have any great poetry writing exercises of your own, share them by commenting or sending in a guest post.
Have a great weekend and keep on writing!
A Blitz of Poetry Writing Exercises
Does all this talk about poetry have you itching to give it a try?
If you’ve written poetry in the past but drifted away from it, then it probably doesn’t take much to trigger your taste for writing verse.
Even though I’m busy with writing projects for my clients and don’t have much time to engage in writing for my own pleasure, poetic images and phrases have been dancing around in my head all month long. I think some of them may have even seeped into my client work and blog posts.
And that’s great for my clients and for everyone who reads this blog, because poetry has a unique way of sticking. Using language tricks and vivid imagery, poetry skips past the conscious mind and communicates directly with the subconscious. Okay, so not all poems achieve this. But poetry does it better than any other writing form.
But where to start? What to write about? To rhyme or not to rhyme?
Poetry Writing Exercises
Over time, Writing Forward has published a number of poetry writing exercises.
If you’d like to dip your toes into poetry writing, give freewriting a try. Or, skip the freewrite and just start writing poems using these five poetry prompts.
Would you prefer to work with existing materials and just piece a poem together from old, discarded parts? Check out this text collage project.
Maybe you want to make poems that rhyme. Rhyme is heavily associated with poetry, even though not all poems rhyme. Find out how to get your mind on rhyme for poetry writing.
If you just want some general tips and advice on writing and poetry, then here are five tips for better poetry writing.
Remember, poetry writing exercises are supposed to be fun and challenging, so enjoy working your way through these, and feel free to share your poems by posting comments.
If you have any poetry writing exercises to share, feel free to post them in the comments or send them in as a guest post.
Rock and Rhyme (Poetry Writing Exercises)
Rhyming poetry goes in and out of vogue all the time, except when it comes to children’s poetry, which must always and absolutely be packed with fun and clever rhymes.
Some poets take to rhyming like it’s nothing, and sound-a-like words roll off their tongues like butter. But others struggle, dancing through the alphabet and flipping through rhyming dictionaries just to find a rhyme as simple as bat and cat.
Poems that rhyme may be a challenge for some, but they’re still fun to write, and a blast to read – especially to read out loud. Even when rhyming is not popular among poets, it’s still good practice for exploring language and having fun with word play.
When I first started writing poetry, I was all about the rhyme and I enjoyed the challenge of trying to come up with interesting and unusual rhymes to end my lines. I was fairly good at it, even without a handy rhyming dictionary.
In honor of the tradition of rhyming poems, are some poetry writing exercises designed to help you get your rhyme on — especially fun because we get to play with music.
We’ll start with the core exercise. I like to call it Rock and Rhyme. Then, we’ll move on to a few variations that you can try.
Rock and Rhyme
All you need is a song. A good song, rhythmic and rhyme-y, but not with a lot of fancy runs. You’ll want a relatively simple tune. Go for an old Beatles song, or just about anything from the eighties. Disco could work, if you’re into that kind of thing, but forget about classical music because most of it doesn’t have words, and what we’re doing requires words. We’re writers, right?
You might want to start with a short, simple three-chord pop song. If you can do that, graduate yourself to longer and more complex tunes.
If you know all the lyrics to your song, that will be immensely helpful. If not, Google the song title with the word “lyrics” and you’ll find it in three seconds flat. Take those lyrics, and rewrite them, trying to match as many rhymes in the song as possible, and not just the end rhymes. Make an effort to match the internal rhymes too. Your rhymes can be as strict or as loose as you want.
If you do just a few of these, pretty soon rhyming will start to feel more natural, and your rhymes will flow with ease.
See How I Roll?
Here’s my attempt with the first chorus from 80s one hit wonder 99 Red Balloons by Nena.
The Original Verse
You and I in a little toy shop
Buy a bag of balloons with the money we’ve got
Set them free at the break of dawn
Till one by one they were gone
Back at base, bugs in the software
Flash the message: something’s out there
Floating in the summer sky
Ninety-nine red balloons go by
My Attempt to Catch the Rhyme
Shoes untied at a little bus stop
Sigh and whistle a tune ’cause it’s all that you’ve got
Set your feet on the fake green lawn
Tie your shoes and then you yawn
Flash the mace, thugs on the make here
Cash is precious: buy a cold beer
Waiting till the bus comes by
Mighty fine greasy spoon — let’s dine!
Pretty bad, I know, but it’s the best I could do in just a few minutes.
More Rhyming Poetry Writing Exercises
Here are a few variations that you can use for this exercise:
- Try it with nursery rhymes. Hey diddle diddle.
- Try it with a famous poem. Shakespeare anyone?
- Try it using a song without lyrics. You’re on your own!
As always, the most important thing is to have fun and challenge yourself. Try to do it on your own first, but if you’re really struggling, hit up a rhyming dictionary or a thesaurus to give yourself a boost.
Are You Ready to Get Down?
Try it for yourself and post a verse or a chorus in the comments! If you’re looking for a song lyric resource, then check out 99 Red Balloons and 100 Other All-Time Great One-Hit Wonders
Do you have any poetry writing exercises or rhymes to share? If so, we’d love to hear from you so leave a comment or use the form on the contact page.
And have a great weekend! Don’t forget to write!
Do you have any favorite poetry writing exercises to share? Did you give this one a try? Share your thoughts and ideas by leaving a comment.
Poetry Writing Exercises: The Text Collage
Most poetry writing exercises are designed to help you focus on one particular area – rhyme, alliteration, etc. But this one works on several levels.
First, this exercise provides a nice, zen-like break from your daily routine because it involves more than sitting down and writing.
Second, it’s a great alternative to recycling those growing stacks of old magazines that are sitting around collecting dust.
Plus, you can come back to this again and again and create a collection of text clippings for future poetry writing exercises.
You’ll need some supplies, a bit of time. Try to set aside an hour or two – and note that you can break it up over several days or even longer.
What You’ll Need (Supplies)
- Old printed material: magazines, newspapers, pamphlets, ads, photocopies, junk mail, etc.
- A small box, basket, jar, or other container
- A pair of scissors
- A glue stick or a roll of clear tape
- Highlighter (optional)
The Writing Exercise
Step One
Go through old magazines, pamphlets, printouts, and photocopies. Any printed material will do. Scan through the text to find words and phrases that are interesting and capture your attention and imagination. You can highlight the text that you like, or move straight ahead to step two.
Step Two
Cut out the phrases you’ve chosen and place them in your container.
Step Three
When you have a nice pile of clippings, pull some out and spread them across a flat work surface. Start sifting through the words, pairing different clippings together to see how the phrasing sounds. Place the ones you like best on a piece of paper, and use glue or tape to adhere them.
Alternative Poetry Writing Exercises (Variations)
- You can pen or pencil in additional language as you put your poem together.
- Instead of writing a poem, you can use this exercise to come up with descriptions or other inspirations for other forms of writing.
- Clip some images while you’re at it, and use them as part of your poetry writing exercises by creating a poetry collage that is also a piece of art.
When you’re all done, save the clippings so you can repeat this exercise again when the mood strikes. Just for fun, here’s a poem I crafted from this very exercise:
your name is on
your invitation would be disastrous
but keep something inside, forged
out of hard work
for this precious sweat and discontent
you have no choice
each time you take me
where the desert heat and the kickdisturb you
Come Back and Share
Feel free to come back and share the results if you decide to give this, or any other poetry writing exercises a try.
Have a great weekend and keep on writing!
If you have any poetry writing exercises to share, feel free to post them in the comments or send them in as a guest post.
Poetry Writing Exercises: Freewriting and Poem Building
Today’s poetry writing exercises will show you how to build a poem from the ground up.
We begin by using freewriting to create a supply of raw material. Then, we’ll sift through the material, using bits and pieces to put together a solid foundation for our poem to stand on.
Next, we add structure – beams, walls, and a roof, giving our poem its form. Finally, we put on the finishing touches, adding fixtures and hanging curtains, polishing our poem to completion.
You’ll find that building a poem isn’t much different from building a house or putting together the pieces of a puzzle. Of course, this is just one technique for making poems, and if you like it or find it useful, then you can use it again and again.
Poetry Writing Exercises
I’m especially excited about these writing exercises because freewriting is one of my favorite writing practices, especially for poetry writing. However, once you’ve worked through the process, you will see how these exercises can be modified and applied to prose.
Poetry writing exercises are meant to be fun but also challenging. You should enjoy yourself but you should also be stretching your literary prowess as you work through the steps, making your way toward a completed poem.
These exercises follow a very particular process with some suggestions for variations and alternative applications that you can use to customize the process to better suit your own writing preferences.
Step One: Gather Your Materials
Your first task is to complete a freewriting session. Sit down in a comfortable place, either with a pen and notebook or with your computer. For a little creativity enhancement, you might play some inspirational music in the background.
Start writing. Write whatever comes to your mind, however ridiculous or obscure. In fact, the more ridiculous or obscure, the better.
Keep the session going for at least ten minutes. Twenty or thirty minutes is even better. Don’t stop writing at any point during the session. You should be scrambling frantically to get all the thoughts and images out of your mind and onto the page.
For more details, check out my article on freewriting.
Step Two: Pick and Choose
Now, step away from your freewrite. Try to let it sit overnight or for a few days. At the very least, let it sit for a few hours.
When you’re ready, come back to your freewrite with a pen and a highlighter (you can use the strikethrough and highlighting features in your word processing software if you’re working on a computer).
Go through the piece using your highlighter to call out words and phrases that stand out. Look for excerpts that use interesting language. Highlight anything that paints a vivid image, evokes emotion, or tickles the senses.
Next, use your pen to cross out words and phrases that are unappealing. Strike anything that sounds flat or boring. Eliminate sections that are overly repetitive, that ramble incoherently, or are simply uninteresting.
Step Three: Create a Foundation
Now you have your raw material. The sections you’ve highlighted are your building blocks. You can type these in a new document, or write them on a piece of paper or on a set of note cards.
The purpose of this step is to pull all of the usable words and phrases from your freewrite and separate them so that you can use them to build the structure of your poem. You might set aside a folder or box and place all your usable material in it, then revisit it from time to time and use that material to make poems.
You can work through these early steps as often as you like, generating freewrites and then filtering through them with your highlighter. The more you do this, the more raw material you’ll have at your disposal. Over the course of a few months, you might practice freewriting every day, but only use your freewrites to make poems a couple of times a month.
Step Four: Build the Structure
Now that you have your raw material in hand, start arranging it on the page. If you’re working on the computer, you can use cut and paste. If you’ve used note cards, you can spread them out on a table, trying different arrangements. Or, you can simply use a pen or pencil to write them in your notebook and make notations about placement.
As you work through this process, you may find that fresh images, words, or phrases pop into your head. Add these to the mix.
This is the most creative step in these poetry writing exercises. You might collect tens or hundreds of freewrites, or you might create a big box full of note cards that contain words and phrases for poetry building. You can revisit the structure-building step time and time again using the raw materials that you’ve created and collected over time.
Be adventurous and take risks. Try combining words in new and unexpected ways. Be on the lookout for language that sounds cliche, and look for alternative wording. Continually ask yourself if your lines paint a picture (or a series of pictures), if they appeal to a reader’s emotions, or if they trigger the senses, evoking a physical reaction in the reader’s mind.
Give yourself plenty of workspace and creative wiggle room. The materials you are using are much like puzzle pieces, and you’ll need to sit and try to fit them together in a coherent way. In the end, you should have your clippings arranged in some order that makes sense. You’ve got lines, the rough draft of your poem.
Step Five: Finishing Touches
Once you’ve got a basic structure for you poem, type it up (or write it down) in completion. This is another good time to take a break. Step away from the piece for a length of time.
When you return, read the poem aloud. If you’ve taken time away from the poem, you’ll be able to read it with a fresh perspective. Look for areas where the poem loses continuity. Scan for repetition. Read and listen to make sure the poem’s rhythm is intact.
As you do this, make notes. You might jot down something like “this word doesn’t fit with the voice,” “this line breaks the rhythm,” or “this image is cliche.”
When you’ve gone through the entire poem a few times, go back and edit, making changes to fix whatever you thought was broken. Polish, edit, then repeat.
You will find that in most cases, you’ll repeat this step several times over. You read the poem, make some notes, apply the changes. Then, when you read it back the second time, you find new areas that need improvement or sections that you missed in your previous review.
Some writers say that a piece is never truly finished. That means that if you keep reviewing the same piece over and over, you’ll keep finding things that you want to change. At some point, it’s time to declare your poem finished, so that you can move on to your next project. Try not to get tangled up and caught in a vicious cycle of editing.
Variations
As with all poetry writing exercises, you should allow yourself to play around with the process so that it suits your personal writing style. Here are a few ideas for variations:
- Practice freewriting every day to build a huge storehouse of raw material.
- Go through your freewrites with a highlighter regularly and capture the highlighted portions on note cards. Store these somewhere and use them randomly to make poems.
- Try working through these steps with prose. This is especially useful in literary writing. If you have a short story with a solid plot and compelling characters, but are struggling with language, any poetry writing exercises, including this one, will help you develop better wording and phrasing for your prose pieces.
As always, have fun with these poetry writing exercises. And keep on writing!
Do you have any poetry writing exercises to share? Have you tried this one? Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments.
Poetry Writing Exercises for Groups and Partners
Today’s poetry writing exercises encourage you to try co-authoring by working with other writers. If you haven’t written poetry with a group or with a partner, then you’re missing out.
Writing is usually a solitary, and sometimes lonely, endeavor. But by working with other writers, you can dodge the loneliness that so many writers must endure.
Co-authoring has plenty of other benefits, too. You can observe other writers at work, use your skills as a team player, and you can share inspiration with other creative people and let some of their inspiration rub off on you.
These poetry writing exercises are a great way to get started.
3 Poetry Writing Exercises
Try one of these poetry writing exercises or try them all. Try them with a group or with just one other writer. Then, come back here and post your poems in the comments or just share how the exercises worked for you.
Exercise #1: Simple Pass
This is the simplest and most straightforward way to co-author a poem. The first person writes a line and then passes it to the second person, who adds another line. In a group setting, the poem would then go to the third person in the circle. In a two-person setting, the poem goes back to the first person.
- Groups can continue passing the poem until everyone in the group has added a line.
- Partners and groups can determine the length of the exercises by establishing a predetermined number of lines until the poem is completed.
- Tweak this exercises by having each person write two lines instead of one, or on the first pass write one line, on the second pass write two lines, on the third pass write three, and so on.
Exercise #2: Move and Repeat
In this exercise, the first person write a four-line stanza. The second person will take the second line of that stanza and use it as the first line of the second four-line stanza and write three new lines for it. Each person will continue taking the second line of the previous stanza and using it as the first line in a new four-line stanza.
The repetition of lines often creates interesting rhythm and also keeps the poem consistent.
- Change the line count – use five- or six-line stanzas instead.
- Move the pattern – instead of moving the second line to the first line, move the third line to the second line or the fourth line to the first line.
- As the poem gets passed, only show the next person the line that is to be repeated. Piece the poem together once the exercise is completed (interesting to see if the writers were thinking along the same lines).
Exercise #3: Clip and Swap
Take an existing poem and jumble the words up so that they make no sense. Each writer in the group will take the jumbled words and use them to compose a brand new poem. Then, compare the poems among the members of the writing group.
- Rule: The writers can add their own words to the jumble, but must use every single word provided.
- You can print out the original poem and cut it up manually or use a word processing program to jumble using the cut and paste feature.
- Add co-authoring by including an extra step: the writers swap completed poems and then rewrite or revise their partners’ exercise.
Group Poetry Writing Online
You can easily adapt these poetry writing exercises so that you can do them online. Pass the poem using an email list or use a forum. Try composing poetry using social media sites like Facebook or Twitter. You’re not locked in to working through these exercises in a live, in-person setting.
Most importantly, have fun and keep on writing!
Have you written in a group or with a partner? What was your experience like? Do you have any poetry writing exercises that you’d like to share? Leave a comment.
Warm-up Poetry Writing Exercises
If you’re going to exercise, it’s a good idea to warm up first. That way, you’ll get your body geared up to do the heavy lifting, the hard running, and the strenuous workout.
Writing’s no different.
Poetry writing exercises are ideal for times when you’re feeling uninspired or lazy, or maybe your poetry is getting stale and you need to take it in a fresh direction. These exercises are good starters and don’t require you to actually write a poem, but they get you thinking about rhythm, language, and imagery.
Poetry Writing Exercises to Warm You Up
These poetry writing exercises are short and simple. You can probably get through them quickly and they will stretch and flex your writing muscles.
Alliteration and Assonance Exercise
Create a list of word pairs and phrases that are built around alliteration or assonance. Remember, alliteration is when words in close proximity start with the same consonant sound (as in pretty picture). Assonance is when words in close proximity echo vowel sounds (bent pen). Try to come up with at least ten of each. The more, the better.
Metaphor Exercise
Make a list of significant life events – birth, death, graduation, marriage, having children, starting your own business. Choose events that are life changing. Now, for each of these events, try to come up with metaphors. A well-known metaphor for life is that it’s a dance. Expand on this exercise by writing a poem about the life event using only the metaphor.
Lyrics and Musicality Exercise
Earlier I said none of these exercises require you write a poem, but this one does ask you to write a song. Actually, you’ll be rewriting a song. It’s simple – choose a catchy song that you enjoy and rewrite the lyrics. Try to go way off topic from what the original lyrics were about. You can play the song while you work the exercise, or search for the lyrics and use those as your baseline. The idea is to get your mind on rhythm and musicality, so rock on!
Poetry writing exercises are meant to be helpful and fun. If you used any of these exercises, feel free to post your results in the comments. And keep on writing!
Do you have any poetry writing exercises to share? Have any special requests for exercises that deal with specific areas of poetry writing? Leave a comment!
