Lorraine Marwood is a fellow Australian children’s author and poet – and also an excellent verse novelist. Enjoy her post – an exercise in poetry writing. Welcome Lorraine.
Patterning a poem
This is often a great technique to both read poems from other poets and also to provide a way into a new poem of your own.
Here is one of my poems:
Drop Tail Lizard
on the grey leaves
and grey bark
garden mulch,
swimming like a sardine
like a tadpole
silver pin with a jeweled eye.
Tells me the day is warmer,
summer that much closer
until that white cat running
running with a small under belly and back legs
of lizard humming
from its hunter’s throat.
Drop
it
cat.
© Lorraine Marwood
‘Drop tail Lizard’ is just such a starting point.
A poem is often a simple observation of life, a detailed observation. A poet looks and mulls and captures such a detail in a word picture.So grab a word camera and observe.
Look outside.
Watch a car, a neighbour, a tree, a bird, the clouds, the way the dog chases a squeaky toy.
Now you have your subject matter – here’s a simple format.
Line 1 Name the object of the poem- use my poem as a template
Line 2 and 3 Bring in location or setting ‘ on the grey leaves/grey bark/garden mulch’
Line 4 and 5 action that the object is doing
Line 6 and 7 Tells us something about the world around me
Line 8 and 9 now for the conflict- what happens to upset this slice of life?
Line 10 and 11- make the last words of resolution have more impact by sitting one word on one line, like stepping stones.
Thanks for dropping in, Lorraine. If you would like to learn more about Lorraine, you can visit her online here or here. And keep dropping back each day in May as I continue to celebrate all things poetry and the release of Pearl Verses the World.