Most Popular Posts On Putting Pizzazz Into Poetry 2025

Here are five of the most popular Poetry posts for 2025. Thank you visitors and followers for your continuing support and interest in teaching poetry and all it entails.

Here's a second chance to connect with poetic ideas. Ideas you can easily carry forward into 2026. Just click the link...

UK Poet, Peter Dixon

This post highlighting the poetry of Peter Dixon proved extremely popular with readers. Peter Dixon was not just a poet. He was a performer, educationalist and artist. I share his famous tea-bag poem.

Viator Poems

In this post I presented yet another recently invented poetry form! I looked closely at the Viator poetic form, first created by author, Robin Skelton. My post proved popular...

First Line Index Poems Concerning School Life

First Line Index Poem connected to the theme of school life proved popular with readers... Short and sweet renditions of this poetry form, courtesy of UK Poets, Alan Ahlberg and Michael Rosen.

A Poem to Celebrate The International Day of Light

The International Day of Light prompted this post to celebrate light and its role in science culture, art, education and development. Light is critical to our survival on earth and the survival of animals, plants and smaller organisms. The very meaning of life is inextricably connected to shining light into dark places, for it is a sanitizer. And so I tried enlightenment with a poem to celebrate this special day.

When In Doubt, Sandra Cisneros

I listened to Padraig O'Tuamo's podcast, 'Poetry Unbound' and undertook some focused listening and fortuitously landed on an episode highlighting the poem 'When In Doubt' by Sandra Cisneros. The very moment I heard Padraigh read Sandra Cisneros's words I felt a compelling need to share the poem. It presents as a roadmap for living. It further enhances my view of the writer and poet. Check it out.

Thanks

Alan j Wright

https://www.alanjwrightauthorpoet.com/

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Poetry Inspired by Images and Objects

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...

Powerful Poetry, 'Refugees' by Brian Bilston

This week, Poetry Friday is hosted by Janice Scully @ Salt City Verse where Janice shares some original words and offers us a taste of Thomas Carlyle to ponder. I encourage you to join a host of poets from all around the globe and visit Janice's page... Almost two years to the day, I wrote a post featuring the poem 'Refugees' by Brian Bilston. The poem was included in Brian's first book of poetry, 'You Took The Last Bus Home.' A very powerful Reverso poem and technically brilliant. A Reverso poem can be read from top to bottom or bottom to top. It will often express opposite opinions depending on which way you read it. Such poems really make us think. A Reverso poem is like a picture turned upside down, a frowning face upended to reveal a smiling one. The poem read in reverse, contradicts itself with an opposing message. In 'Refugee' Brian Bilston focuses on a societal issue that tends to polarize feelings and the opposing views are clearly in eviden...

Opposite Poems

O pp o s ite P oem s In his book, ' How To Write Poetry,' Paul Janeczko presents the idea of opposite poems. Paul suggests they could also be referred to as antonym poems. This is wordplay and it's fun to try. Here are some examples Paul provides to help us see very clearly how these short little poems work. I think the opposite of chair Is sitting down with nothing there What is the opposite of kind? A goat that butts you from behind Paul Janeczko You will notice the poems are written in rhyming couplets. They can be extended so long as you remember to write in couplets. Paul shows us how this is done. What is the opposite of new? Stale gum that's hard to chew A hot-dog roll as hard as rock Or a soiled and smelly forgotten sock You might notice that some of Paul's opposite Poems begin with a question. The remainder of the poem answer the question posed. Opposite poems are a challenge, but it is a challenge worth trying. N...

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