One of the beauties of poetry is that any writing can be turned into poetry by a deft hand. Look for types of writing that are about the length of a poem. What that means to
you will depend on what kind of poetry you write. A single Tanka is 1/100th the size of Renga. A villanelle is nineteen lines, but only thirteen are different. If youre writing songs to go on
radio, it is a different length than neo-ballads with forty verses. The writing you find to inspire you might be advertisements, technical manuals, graffiti, snippets from the paper or articles from magazines.
Peter Berryman once suggested obituaries and prescriptions. Any random piece of writing can be inspiration. Its not the content or the original purpose, but what you do with
it. |