All people are poets they say, but it takes a lot of skill and originality to be a good one. Skills can be learned with regular practice, but creativity often needs a helping hand. Try these five tips to get your poetical muse flowing!

1. Stress, Stress, Stress!

There is nothing like a bit of pressure to concentrate your mind! Allow yourself just five minutes to write. Do not worry about scanning or rhyming, jot down random words and phrases then see what you have come up with. Chances are you will have at least a line or two to work with.

2. Think Of A Subject

The weather, your dog, the rat that dumped you, your annoying inlaws, these can all be turned into good poems. Yes they have all been done before, but do not worry about that, there is nothing new under the sun. Look for a unique angle by jotting down a whole list of associated words and then brain storm from these. You will soon see a thread emerging which will lead you down an interesting poetical pathway.

If you can not think of anything from your own life experiences, buy a newspaper and look for a good human interest story. The agony columns in a womans magazine are also great sources for inspiration.

3. Out Of Mind

All the best poetry is written during an altered state of consciousness so go for a quite walk, a long run or any other repetitive exercise which occupies the body but leaves the mind free to wander other worlds. If you hate the thought of exercise, ironing works just as well! Many a good poem has been birthed amongst shirts, sheets and underwear!

4. Use Your Senses!

Taste, touch, sight, sound, smell can all be used to create sensory word pictures which will really bring your poem alive. Spend a few minutes describing an object or place using all your senses.

5. Make A List, Metaphorically!

In fact make three! One for adjectives, one for concrete nouns, (those are the ones you experience with your senses, e.g. chip butty) and one for abstract nouns, (these are non-sensory like disapproval).

Fill a page with these and then pick a word from each column to construct a metaphor. Most of what you produce will be rubbish, but you have a good chance of coming up with a gem or two which may well result in a very original poem.

6. Get Religion

This does not mean joining some freaky religious sect although go ahead if you think it will add to your creativity! A less extreme option is to open a bible randomly and glance swiftly down its pages. Irrespective of the religious persuasions you hold, there is no doubt that there are some beautifully crafted phrases in the Bible that can quickly inspire new trains of thought or even form the basis of a poem in their own right.

As you can see, there are lots of other ways to provoke inspiration, but as long as you practice regularly, using just these methods should see an improvement in your verse in quite a short space of time. Once you have written a few poems of a reasonable standard, you can then think about getting them published or even selling your poems. It is not as hard as you think! Check this article to find out.

Publishing And Selling Poems.

Remember tip No 2 about brain storming? Another method to do this is to create a mind map. You will find this video useful if you are unsure on how to do this.

Mindmapping Video.