Poetry is about capturing the reader's feelings

Previously, I wrote about poetry being a genre of patterns. Today I write about two more things to remember about poetry.

Poetry is a simple genre to write once you know the basics. It should not be complicated as people would like to think. Poetry is about capturing the feelings of the readers and creating mental images.

With poetry, you can write about anything, as long as you are able to create mental images and capturing the readers' feeling.

How can you create mental pictures?

Use words to create mental pictures. So that as the reader goes through the poem, he/she envisions what is happening or what the object or artefact looks like.  Poetry is like painting a picture. Portray the picture vividly and you are done.

With painting, you use brushes and paint to create the images. Here you use words to create the images. You have to use concrete words, words that create pictures in other people's minds.

Look at this short stanza

I saw him, a giant of a man, standing tall like a baobab tree,
looking at me with protruding eyes, hate written on his face.
I jumped out of the vehicle and ran towards the bushy nearby hill.

The sun was searing hot, I felt its heat on my headas if the huge ball, the sun has climbed down by a few steps.
" He is here,' the voice of the assassin boomeranged.
I was all sweat. I panted as I jogged up the hill.


As you can see, use active verbs that create images. If you manage to create these images on whatever you have written, you are on the way to success.

How to capture feelings

If you are able to transfer how you feel to a piece of paper you are a poet. It is difficult to explain how you can do that, but I can give you a few tips.

First, write about something you love and care about. Plan carefully, before writing so that you know exactly what you want to portray.

secondly, emotionalise yourself before you start writing. How can you do this? After you have made your plan, read poems that make you emotional. Once you are emotionally charged, you can transfer such emotions to the paper.

Play some songs that touch you, before you set out to write. Even when you are writing listen to your best songs, the songs that energise you. Some people feel that this can disturb them. No. Never. All you need to do is getting used to it.

These are the steps you can do to emotionalise yourself before setting out to write a poem.

Now as you reflect on the above advice, here is one of my poems,

Bury me in Africa

If I visit a foreign land
Then fail to come back,
When I have died,
Failing to come back to the land of my birth'
Where my mother's menstrual blood flowed,
Take me, ferry me to Africa.

I grew up in Savannah of Sub Sahara Africa;
Where wasps stung me
Inducing tears from my eyes to fall
To sink down into Africa's soils.

When I laboured in the fields
The sun scorched me-
Sweat fell from my skin
And was sucked by Africa.
I sipped out blood from bleeding gums
And spat on Africa's dry footpaths.
These moments, such memories shake me,
Africa is my brooder
And I will be perpetually its son
Bury me in Africa.