How I Create My Vocal Poems

Introduction

When I started in my current job, I had used Excel, but I was not an expert by any means. I needed to support my department in a lot of ways, which I had never had to before, so I did a lot of searching on Google, and that helped me gain the skills and experience I needed to become an expert.

When I started on Vocal, I had not written a poem since I was at school, but I started with free form and then a sonnet, and since then, I have learned many forms, and I consider myself an excellent poet.

I am no William Shakespeare, Sylvia Plath or Dylan Thomas, but I do produce and publish some excellent poetry and have a dozen anthologies self-published on Amazon.

This is about the tools and inspiration that I use to create my poetry, and I hope that it may help you going forward.

Types Of Poem

I have managed to introduce a few new poetry forms to other creators because other creators introduced me to these forms.

My preferred forms are as follows:

• Sonnet - If it's OK for Shakespeare, it's OK for me

I seldom do short-form poetry such as Haiku and Senryū (川柳) unless there is a Vocal Official or Unofficial Challenge that specifies that form, and there are two current Haiku Challenges live.

• Villanelle - This is a definite favourite of mine, and I have written a piece on how to write a Villanelle below. I like the use of repetition to emphasise a point.

• Pantoum - Another form that uses repetition to emphasise, and I wrote a piece on how to create one of these as well.

• Terza Rima - This form was introduced to me by Calvin London, but was invented early in the fourteenth century by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri for his narrative poem The Divine Comedy, which he set in hendecasyllabic lines.
• Terzanelle - This is a hybrid of Villanelle and Terza Rima
• Ghazal - This is a series of couplets. There must be no fewer than five, but it is great for emphasising points like this one I did:

• Sestina - This is a thirty-nine-line poem and is the longest form that I regularly use. I found this from the Vocal poetry tags, but I have never seen any other creators use it. This was my first attempt at the form.

• Cinquain - There are lots of Cinquain forms. They don't have to rhyme, but maintain a syllable count and are good for Concrete Poetry, where the shape is the most important thing, but I don't really like it, so I have only done it once, but I am fine with most Cinquains. The Vocal Editor does not let you align your words so to get the shape I write the poem in Google Docs and take a screenshot. Here is an example:

I have recently discovered other forms by using these excellent informative pages, and there are a lot to choose from, but they are not all for me.

Looking For Rhymes

While I can usually think of a rhyme, I often use Rhymezone. which gives a lot of options, and sometimes they are not enough for me, but it is free, and you can find Rhymezone here.

Some might think I am a cheat for doing this, but very often it gives you hundreds of words to choose from, and I have to think which is the best fit.

Sometimes none work, and then I have to find some other way to keep the rhyme form.

Inspiration

I am lucky enough to have a wonderful Muse whom I often write poems for, and who inspires me with suggestions and just by being herself.

I am also inspired by art that I find, usually on Facebook. A lot of these you will find in my poetry:

Pete Rumney Art

There are probably some that I have missed, but these are all wonderful artists and have been fine with me using their art as inspiration for my work.

Anthologising

I included a link to my anthologies on Amazon, but here is my guide to self-publishing which may be helpful if you want to do the same thing.

And this is one of my latest publications co-created with Angie Livingstone (The Glittering Fox).

Conclusion

Thank you for reading and I hope this has given you an idea or two.

There are no secrets here, this is all stuff that you can do too.