Here are some suggestions that might help you generate some rough copy poetry.
1. Write daily:
Don't wait for inspiration to strike. Be there every day in front of the page. Do free writing. Play with writing. Use some writing exercises and consider it like what it sounds like it is: exercise. When you exercise, you are not trying to win a race, or win a game, you are developing yourself so that when you do enter a race, or play in a game that you will be better prepared to make the most of those activities. Without the exercises, without the training, you have not prepared yourself to perform at your fullest potential.
2. Time management:
How much time is available? Many of us have huge demands on our time. You may feel that if you don't have time to finish a piece that it isn't worth doing any writing at all. Wrong! Opening lines can be dashed off in minutes but completion may take days or weeks. Be cautious, and aim perhaps for 5-10 lines in an evening. Don't wait for the muse, but write what you can when you can. Odd phrases and lines are at least something to work from, and more inspiring than a blank page. Most writers I know carry a notebook everywhere. They write on their breaks at work. They write while eating their lunch. They may think up a phrase and stop work long enough to jot that thought down. Do it. Little by little gets lots and lots done.
3. Write the way you talk:
Write the way that is comfortable. When you write letters or tell stories, do you usually start from a newspaper article you've read, an anecdote told or overheard, something witnessed, a general reflection? Start a poem in the way you're most comfortable with.
4. Plan:
What sort of poem had you in mind? A story, a comment, a tribute, a protest, an elegy, a character study, a memorial? Skim through contemporary examples to start yourself off.
Concerning the issues involved, imagine the poem were a newspaper article: what points would you make, with what evidence and resounding arguments? Got it together? Go on then: let yourself go. Something will emerge.
5. Make sure the subject's important to you.
Isn't life too short to spend it doing something you don't think matters? What if you are successful, but successful at something that you personally feel is insignificant. Wouldn't you rather write something that matters than be praised for writing crap? What matters to you? The death of a friend or family member, rites of passage, the bitter sweetness of first love, one of life's turning points, old transgressions, a childhood incident, injustices, unacknowledged fears... Use a mask of the second or third person if the content is too personal or painful. Be brave. Write it. Tell it. Get it on paper.
6. Give yourself up to reverie.
Go for a walk, lie on the sofa and close your eyes, go to bed, cut out the surrounding world. Jot down the things that come you, in whatever order or confusion. Put the scribblings away for the present, and only open the folder hours or weeks later to see what you've got. You'll be amazed at what's inside you.
7. Free the imagination.
Try automatic writing. In books like The Artist's Way and the Right to Write it is recommended that you do daily pages of free writing. Three pages every morning. Never miss. Always do it. Make it a habit. Do it so often that one day when you fail to write your three pages you will notice that your world is off center. Then, to restore your sense of normalcy, write those daily pages ASAP. Try it. Go for say 5 minutes at a stretch, writing continuously, never stopping. Go through the material when you've collected in ten pages or so, and circle anything interesting.
8. Get a friend to say words at random.
Write down the first response that comes to you. Build a poem around three of the words.
9. Use a diary or journal:
You can use yours or someone else's), I don't mean to sneap a peek at your sister's, but there are journals of famous poets you can check out of the library. Jot down the first incident found in the journal on three successive pages. Now make a poem of these.
10. Describe, as closely as you can, some recurring dream or nightmare.
Reverse the sequence, and then make a poem.
11. Work through metaphors.
Take four lines of any contemporary poem. Identify the metaphors. Then use a thesaurus to find alternatives for the metaphors. Then repeat with the alternatives, finding words even further removed from the originals. Think deeply on three or so of the more interesting words, and see if can draft a poem incorporating them.
12. Write a pastiche.
Take a stanza of something well known and rewrite it so that
- a) the idiom is entirely different,
- b) the lines end with nonsense rhymes,
- c) the piece is ruined with the smallest possible change,
- d) the piece looks completely fresh and contemporary.
13. Use Yourself to Inspire Yourself.
Look through your notebooks and just pick up lines. You can take the last line of the last poem you wrote (which needn't be good). Carry on from there, ignoring entirely what you drafted before.
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