There are many ways pictures and photographs can be conscripted to support the writing of poetry. Allow me to share a few ideas with you: Old photographs are a great source of inspiration. Cynthia Rylant explored this idea with great success in her book 'Something Permanent' where she employed the Depression era photographs of Walker Evans to add a new voice to the starkness to the lives of people experienced under extreme circumstances. I have used this strategy to spark many individual poems. In ' I Bet There's No Broccoli On The Moon,' I used a photo I had taken in 2004 while living in New York to inspire a poem. The poem was based on a story related by a friend who grew up in New York.  I regularly combined poetry and pictures in my writer's notebook, drawing on inspiration from the photograph and my personal memories. We can also utilize existing cartoons and illustrations to create ekphrastic poems. I frequently use the illustrations of Jim Pavlidis to co...

I find myself once again focused upon  the theme of rhyming couplets. There are some important elements involved in writing couplets. Couplets consist of two lines of rhyming verse and they possess a set metre/meter.  Simply put, metre/meter is a poetic device providing a sound pattern that gives the written words a rhythmical and melodious sound. A famous example of this is the following  traditional English-language nursery rhyme in the form of a riddle : As I was going to St.Ives, I met a man with seven wives. Shakespeare also made frequent use of rhyming couplets, as in this example from 'Hamlet.'                The time is out of joint, O cursed spite              That ever I was born to set it right! Here are some tips that might prove useful in writing rhyming couplets: Start with the word you have chosen to end your first line and then find a rhyming word to end line two. Now, write th...

This offering probably qualifies as a rant poem. A rant poem with a touch of irony. For as long I can remember I have found the unnecessary insertion of multiple 'likes' into everyday conversation quite cringeworthy. It's a gap filler in what is best described as an unsavoury word salad.  When the word like is indiscriminately spread across an utterance, it detracts from the overall impact of the message. Can you tell I find it irksome? Poets respond to many things. In this instance, a single word was all it took! So here is my response... Unlikable Have you noticed how some people overuse the word-like? Like every statement begins with- like They like, litter their conversations with like. Like, it’s annoying Like, stop it!   It’s like, so crazy To keep saying like!   They say things like- Hey, has everyone like noticed how Mandy like smiles   every time, Tristan like walks past? It’s like so obvious she like, likes him.   Do ...