How Can I be Inspired to Write a Poem?

Is it difficult to compose a poem? It can be challenging to get started on writing a poem if you are not in the momentum of starting one. Inspiration sounds necessary for any writer to compose a poem. Then, where’s the inspiration? Is it inside of us?

I wrote my first poem at the age of 16 when I missed my very first childhood friend I lost in touch with during our middle school moving and transition. I’m not the type who fell in love at the age of 12 then started to write love poems. No, I didn’t realize that my first childhood friend meant so much to me until I was reaching my “blossom season”. We lost in touch because that’s the time we didn’t even own a home phone, needless to mention computers, smartphones and social networking sites. What’s more, we were too young to even know that we were supposed to keep in touch in some ways or how to keep in touch. It’s inconceivable that a person like me who grew up at such a time and such a place is now working online and my hometown also becomes one of the most chic cities in the world.

When I started to miss my childhood friend, I only remembered a few segments of the childhood moments spent with her, but all were beautiful and angelic – her big, clear and deep dark brown eyes and natural and neat hair style. I regret not to have even kept a photo of her. Memories are the only “pictures” I have of her.

I decided to write a poem about her, about those memories, so I could keep those memories and wouldn’t lose them (I was afraid of having lost in touch and not even having a photo of her, nor any other written letters or the like)

I only remembered one of our school excursions, the daily meetups and chats after school in the little public garden next to her home, and the day she came to congratulate me for attending a best middle school in our city.

So I wrote down those memories plus opening lines to form an unskilled verse that looks like containing four scenarios – Memory of Childhood. I’m not productive in terms of poetry writing. I only write when I’m inspired, and I’m not a “poet” either.

Interestingly, I have successfully built a platform for other poets and poetry lovers who are more talented. I launched LoveisLonely.com, one of the best online poetry communities in which poetry lovers express themselves with poems and make friends by poetry.

This contribution also makes me learn a lot. I see very young girls write excellent love poems because they experience this feeling. I also see a lot of lonely souls find their home here and feel less lonely when they express and communicate with the like-minded. I admire their talent. Life experiences make me more calm and therefore I cannot write poems as passionate as those talented young poets do.

If you ask me about the inspiration, I would say that it’s inside of us. The level of our passions and emotions determines the levels of our inspirations. I admit that a skillful professional writer is able to write good poems effortlessly, however, the poems that truly touch us deeply are those from the bottom of a heart, even without a skillful mind.

To write a poem doesn’t really require a lot of educational background; all what it requires is a burning heart.

Attached Images:

•  License: Creative Commons image source

Min Min tells of her own story about poetry writing and the poetry community she built for this society.

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