Funky Cold meme-dina

Crafty Green Poet tagged me with this meme: list at least four things you think a beginning poet should attend to and four mistakes you think a poet should avoid.

It’s an interesting meme, but I’m not so sure I have any special wisdom for a beginning poet as opposed to anyone writing poetry in a general way (including myself). So my “tips” or “advice” or “thoughts” or “whateveryouwanttocallthem” are more for anyone who is writing poetry (including me). They are based on my experience, and I do them because they make me happy, and I think, make me a better writer.

And ps: I will do three and three because four and four seems like too many things to remember when you should just be writing.

Things I always remember to do:

1) Read. Read, read, read, read, read. If you are writing without reading then you aren’t learning and growing. We learn by looking at what others did successfully. And in poetry, we even learn by looking at what others did unsuccessfully. So read. Reading is fun, anyway.

2) Be a gracious reader of others’ work. Learn to talk about poetry, and then when you talk about it, always do your best to meet that poem on its own terms. Don’t bang it into someone else’s poem, or your poem. Let it be its own poem.

3) Have fun. Taking the self to seriously can result in bad poetry.

Things I always remember not to do (and sometimes do anyway because I am human, especially stupid # 2 but I learned my lesson):

1) Put too much weight on what someone else has or hasn’t said about my poems. Did I enjoy writing it? Do I like it? That’s got to be good enough.

2) Not write something down in my notepad because I am afraid 1) it won’t sound as good on the paper as it did in my head, and 2) my notebook will get stolen. I think another word for this is writers block, and another word for that is fear. Fear is not helpful. So flush it. Besides, it turns out if #2 happens, you become very prolific, freed from this whole problem of to write or not to write entirely. Thanks crook!

3) Compete. There is no competition, only collaboration. All good poetry should be out there. Even some bad poetry needs to be out there. Don’t compete. Just do your thing.

Now I must tag people: Sam because he’s an editor, Collin because he has opinions, Brent because he’s my bud and L because everyone knows why L.

Tags: crafty green poet, follow your own advice, how to write poetry, poetry meme