Whether you are a beginner or a pro at poetry writing, you know the feeling of staring at a blank page - the desire of putting into words what is so clear in your head... and the delusion of not being able to do so. 

But theWrittenRevolution 's staff is here to help! Today marks the start of our poetry workshop, and this one is all about the process of writing a poem. Every participant will start from scratch and we'll help you create a poem from start to finish.

The workshop is both going to be interactive and independent. This means that 1, we'll be helping you on the way with advice, chat events, and interactions on blog entries and 2, you can do the workshop on your own as well and start anytime you want to, any step of the way. This means that if you already have a poem draft you can skip the part where we come up with the first ideas, and join the polishing stage!

Of course, we'll be exploring only a few of the countless techniques that are out there to help you create poetry: it would be impossible to go through every single way to get inspired and edit your own work to perfection! But it is our hope to teach you something that you can always resort to and that hopefully will always help at least a little in your literary endeavours. And of course, you can suggest your method in the comments section!

Today we start with something simple: how to get inspiration!

Inspiration, that sneaky bitch

Yep, we've all been there - cursing at the lack of inspiration, burning with the will to write poetry but not being inspired by any subject in the world.

There are countless techniques and ways to help your creativity start itself up. Some simple ones are:

• The 52 Week Challenge! For example, the group SixWordStories once did one of these (52 Week Six Word Story Challenge! - Week 01 ) and they are usually a lot of fun!
• The 100 Themes Challenge! This challenges you to write 100 pieces around the themes listed. The group 100ThemesChallenge has different variations on this (Variation 1 , Variation 2 and so on) and while the "themes" are basic, they are usually ones that people easily relate to and can use as a starting point.
• Prompts! There are so many around DeviantArt alone (tWR has their own monthly ones, latest is September tWR Prompt: Anger) and they really help by giving you a "contour" you can fill in as you wish.We recommend watching HugQueen and following her Love DA Lit series because she tends to list a lot of writing opportunities right there (latest issue is Love DA Lit: Issue 239).

We'll be discussing a couple of other, slightly more complex, ways to get inspiration as well.

Take a "moment" out of your poem

Let's say that you went on a hike last week - more often than not, if you try to write down the whole experience through a poem, the sensory overload from it will translate into an overloaded poem as well, where there's too many ideas put together that don't really connect and the reader, confused, simply hops from one to the other.

It's important to keep in mind that while sometimes poetry tells a story, sometimes it just tells of a moment IN the story - and that, especially when you are struggling to write, can be the difference between staring at a blank page and putting pen to paper. The "sensory overload" that I spoke of before is the sum of all the great things you saw, smelled, touched, and experienced on your hike: and sometimes you just need to pick one, and follow where it takes you.

Example: I went on a hike with a friend some time ago, and on a tree, a woodpecker had made a perfect asterisk shape (picture: Woodpecker). I'm not an expert, so I've no idea if that is common or not! To me, it was just a fucking awesome thing, and I took a picture because it was so weird we also got to see a waterfall, a rainfall on a nearby mountain, and while we started the hike under the sun, by the time we were almost back it was snowing! So there were a lot of awesome things. If I were to write a poem on the whole hike, there'd be so much to say. But it becomes easier when I just focus on that one peculiar detail.

A woodpecker's doodle, the
bored art of a lonely bird; I
weave stories for it, wonder
its meaning - as if placed there
to photograph, a forgotten footnote
for an untouched landscape.

And there we go, a draft was born (regardless of quality, it was born )! The woodpecker's shape being an asterisk made me think of "additions" to a text, and footnotes, and doodles. Then I realized that sometimes we think too much of insignificant things - I mean, the woodpecker surely doesn't know he made a specific shape, he just does what a woodpecker does. But we still think about it.

Which brings us to the next way to get inspiration...

The Stream of Consciousness, or Association

Getting inspiration sometimes takes something more than just a good idea, right? Just saying "write about spring" isn't going to cut it when you're already going through a mild-to-severe writer's block or you just can't write on demand like that.

That's when you can use the "stream of consciousness" idea to help you get inspired. Start with an idea, and let it take you - make connections between it and things that are relevant to you or your life, and don't stop until you feel that you have enough ideas written down.

Example: Let's say that I do want to write about spring but it's the kind of broad, all-encompassing thing that it's hard to write about just because you could say pretty much anything about it... and everyone has written about spring before, so originality is a concern as well!

I'll start writing things down, with the idea of spring in mind and just letting my mind go free after that, until I find something that strikes my fancy.

Spring, light between the trees, squirrels, the day we moved into our new apartment, playing ball with Alfred, he seriously does not know how to play with a frisbee, the park where I went to do yoga with my co-worker Katie, her kid trying to make us fall when we did the poses, iced tea, I can make the same tea leaves hot in winter.

There it is. I feel like all of them are good ideas, but the very last thing is what hit me - tea. I LOVE tea, I always make it, and what I mentioned up there is true - I use the same tea leaves, but I brew iced tea in warmer weather and hot tea in colder one. We could say that it's my constant throughout the seasons. so why not use write about tea and how it ties in with seasons?

I carry the seasons in
a tumbler, iced or steaming
safe within steel walls.

A brew of ripening berries, with
hibiscus petals in bloom
a strong serving of mate
and a sharp hint of lemon -
an awakening whirlwind of
flavours, a welcome
morning tradition.

truth be told, I don't like the two last verses, but that's what revision is for. This poem may not be so much about spring as it is about the constant of tea across seasons, but the images of the berries, hibiscus, mate and lemon are meant to sort of evoke spring, or at least they do for me. They'll be worked on during the workshop to make that connection the best it can be! (:

The Poem That Came From Prose

If you are having a hard time coming up with an idea for a poem, you can always look at something you wrote previously. I like doing this by using my prose, because there is usually a moment in each story that can be turned into an awesome poem! It's also easier because you can't really plagiarize your own work. you can use someone else's, but that always poses the question "am I taking inspiration from, or copying words from the story to make a poem?" which can become a real hassle.  

Example: using the flash story The Celery Murder, I'll come up with a poem based on a moment within it. I've been told that the image of the pan boiling happily was well-made, so I'll use that as a starting point.

Clink, clink, clink -
the boiling pan recants 
that evening's events, but the
detectives don't speak its
tongue.

She tries her best to
free her mistress from guilt. Her
steam runs out as Mrs. Potts
confesses, condensate tears
lining her lid.

I thought it would be fun to talk from the pan's perspective. she probably witnessed everything and thought her lovely patron Mrs.Potts was right doing what she did. After all, if our kettles and pots had a soul, they'd be like our pets - loyal and loving.