It is my firm belief that anyone can write poetry. It is not an art reserved for the learned or the few. Much like painting it can be taught. I want to walk you through a process today much like Bob Ross did in his series, Joy of Painting. We will have colors on our palette much the same comprising nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Follow along, express yourself, and above all, have fun.

The Joy of Writing

It’s another fantastic day and I’m happy you’re here to write with me.  Remember, we can all be poets and express ourselves. Because that’s what it’s really about: expressing ourselves. Just stay confident and stay writing.

Today we’re going to try something a little different.  I’m going to walk you through writing a love poem. First off, we have some basic nouns, or body parts:

Face; lips; hands; hearts

Now, that you’ve got those, let’s consider what we might do to these different body parts by looking at verbs:

Brush; kiss; burn; break

And finally, I’d like you to imagine how you will describe these body parts with adjectives:

Pale; dark; trembling; firm

The first thing you’ll want to do with these nouns is pair them with verbs. Think: how will I interact with the person I love? I’ll give examples but you can put them anyway you like.

Brush face

Kiss lips

Burn hands

Break hearts

After this we can determine who is kissing lips and breaking hearts.

The simplest form to take for all of these is you, the writer:

I brush your face

I kiss your lips

I burn your hands

I break your heart

But you can just as easily enjoy these things with the person you love:

We brush faces

We kiss lips

We burn hands

We break hearts

Remember your adjectives? We haven’t forgotten them. Take them from the list and pair them up: pale, dark, trembling, firm.

I brush pale faces

I kiss dark lips

I burn trembling hands

I break firm hearts

I hope you’re writing along because there’s one more step. Let’s try different perspectives in the same poem: I, you, or we.

We brush dark faces

We kiss pale lips

I burn trembling hands

You break firm hearts

Feel free to change and rearrange these in any way you see fit.  Every line doesn’t necessarily need an adjective.

I burn your hands

as we kiss lips

brushing dark faces and

breaking pale hearts

That’s it for today. Thank you so much for writing with me.

Remember to believe in your abilities and let me know how it turned out. I encourage you to share poems in the comment section or on your own blogs. Email me with any questions or concerns: beeditty@gmail.com

Until next time: stay confident and stay writing!