As National Poetry Month continues, you may feel compelled to put pen to paper or fingertips to keyboard and compose a few verses yourself. Wonderful! Congratulations! You’ve caught the writer’s bug, and the only cure is to get words on the page.

But where to start? If you’re new to poetry or writing in general, it can be intimidating to come up with what to write about and recognize how a poem is different from a short story or journal entry. Here are few tips and prompts to get you started writing a poem.

First, start reading poetry. Familiarize yourself with the variety of poems that have already been written to inspire you. You can do an in-depth line-by-line analysis of a poem or simply let the language wash over you. After reading a few poems, start small and try out structure. Poems like haikus and sonnets act as templates, as there are only so many syllables for each line and so many lines you have to write. Just fill in the syllables to write the line.

On the flip side, don’t feel like you have to follow any rules. Just start writing, don’t obsess over the first few lines (you can always go back and change them). Don’t feel the need to write a completely finished poem. If you’re working off of a prompt, who knows where a writing session will lead. And that’s the good thing: You don’t need to know, and chances aren’t you shouldn’t try to know. It’s best when you just write whatever comes to mind.

But what if your mind is blank? Well, then use a writing prompt. Here are a few:
• Write a poem inspired by your favorite food.
• Write a poem about why your favorite season.
• Write a poem about how you met someone special in your life.
• Write a poem about a holiday memory, maybe even a bad one.
• Write a poem about the advice you’d give your younger self.

These are fairly basic prompts, and you can easily expand them and give yourself a bit more structure. For example, read three poems by somebody else, pick out 7-10 words from those poems that stand out to you, then write about your favorite season incorporating those words into a 10 -line poem. Or start your poem with a “fill in the blank” metaphor or simile, something along the lines of “my mind is like a ___” or “my heart is ___,” and then write a poem giving advice to your younger self. And don’t feel like you have to go it alone. Use a thesaurus, a rhyming dictionary, and Google to help. I’ve researched how to fix a broken wing on a wild bird and discovered the synonym “hilt” to replace “handle” in a poem. Just be sure you understand a word’s true meaning before inserting it into your poem; some synonyms may deviate in definition from your original word and could inadvertently change the meaning of the line you are writing.

As you find yourself writing, don’t feel limited to only writing about “poetic” things. I think a common misconception is that poetry has to be filled with birds, flowers, and old boat types of images and subjects. Contemporary poetry embraces pop culture, technology, and slang, as that is what we are often surrounded by.

Also, don’t feel you need to write about big ideas and things. There’s also worth in what would be considered the mundane. Write a poem about taking out the garbage, and you find you’re really writing about the environment. Write a poem about learning to ride your bike, and what ends up on the page is nostalgia for a simpler time.

Of course, there’s the old adage to “write what you know,” and I would refine this by adding to write within your world. Take something you are familiar with and try to look at it/think about it in a new way. I also like to start small, at an angle, see what comes up. Or go in the opposite direction and write outside of your world. If you want to write a poem about life on Mars, or medieval knights, go for it! I’d love to read it. The point is to have fun and exercise your mind.

Britannica.com defines poetry simply as a form of literature that evokes a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience or a specific emotional response through language chosen and arranged for its meaning, sound, and rhythm. Yes, that’s the simple definition. To break this down a bit further, consider poetry as relaying an experience or emotion with very thoughtful words (and line breaks).