Observation
This might seem like an easy one, but a great way to find new ideas for poems is simply by observing people, nature, traffic…anything.
A poet should always be alert, listening in to peoples conversations for interesting snippets and anecdotes which can be stored and used later. Or you could just look outside your window….what does what you see mean? Are rows of terrace houses indicative of a post-industrial Britain? Or is that green grass our Jerusalem?
A good poet will show the reader what is happening, and also let them deduce why. Their opinion might be completely different from yours, but poetry can be interpreted in many ways.
Take a look at the following poem and see if you can construct your own version of it:
A View From My Window
From my window on Ashen Avenue
netted with a frost-bound spider-web
I can see a sparrow in a hurricane
searching for a way….with a head full of dreams
purring for faith that can move anything
like a ship its sails are waiting for wind
maybe when the weather changes
the sparrow trapped in the hurricane
would hear the world say, it will make it
and when faith that can move anything comes
it will spread its wings and fly uphill
from my window on the Pallid Street
I still see the sparrow whirring in the hurricane
nursing swollen knees with head full of dreams
it is dusk and stars collapsed in its eyes
its mind is failing yet it whines for life
if there is a hole in the floors of heaven
to drip down tears without auguries
it will faint in the deep waters of happiness
in the shadow of a broken house
down a deserted street, lined by propped walls,
bejeweled by cold hearths, stands the sparrow
facing a phantom stair, chased by the silence
of dead feet and lost and ruined by peering moons,
soon time’s stony palace will crumble it down
and with no nerve to feel nor brain to invent
all will be a midsummer’s night dream
in the shadow of the broken house is a mirror
how very different we are and how alike
the sparrow turned me to the mirror
what marks the border between us, it said
in the mirror is a wolf at the door
shooting snake’s eyes, the clouds are dark
and the wind so high, the sparrow
can’t see the other side of the road
I looked into the mirror again
the sparrow was gone, it was me in the mirror
tending words of wisdom, words of time,
for a substance of existence, for a new breath
Padmore Enyonam Agbemabiese