How to Write a Poem about Yourself
Poetry is one of the world's oldest forms of art, and you
don't need a creative writing degree to participate. Poetry comes in a variety
of genres, subgenres, styles, traditions, and schools. As a beginner, you may
be overwhelmed by the numerous options, but you can begin with a subject you
know better than anyone else: yourself. In a few simple steps, learn how to
write a poem about yourself.
To write a poem about yourself, follow these steps:
Start freewriting. Try a warm-up writing exercise before
deciding on a poetic form, rhyme scheme, and literary devices for your own
poem. Open your journal or word processor and jot down any thoughts you have
about your topic”in this case, yourself and your life. Small writing prompts
like the following can help you focus your brainstorming session: What details
about yourself have you discovered during this period of introspection? What
are your thoughts? What thoughts pass through your mind, and what do they
reveal about you? What are your favorite items or memories? What or who do you
have feelings for? What are you scared of? Remember that your answers to these
questions aren't the first lines of a free verse poem yet (though you may use
some of what you've written later), so don't be concerned with word choice.
Assemble, remove, and replace. Examine the material you have
after you have free written and made notes about yourself. Allow your creativity
to take over by being playful and experimental. Add line breaks and experiment
with rhyme. Consider the poem's sound and the ideas that emerge. Remove clichés
(overly familiar phrases) to steer your poem in unexpected directions.
Take a break, then do it again. The first draft of your poem
is rarely the final product. Allow yourself some distance from the draft so you
can look at it again with fresh eyes. Perhaps you'll realize you could turn it
into a short story or a prose poem. Because the poem is about you, consider
remembering other aspects of yourself or writing about yourself on a different
day.
3 Tips for Writing a Poem About Yourself
Investigate various methods for generating new ideas for
writing poetry about yourself:
1. Collect new words. Allow powerful words to guide your
thoughts. Collect new words that remind you of personal memories of your
characteristics using a thesaurus or rhyming dictionary.
2. Experiment with a poetic form. Poetic forms provide structure
that can be useful when writing a poem. Try a haiku, a villanelle, or a sonnet
for a poem with a limited length.
3. Make use of literary devices. When writing about
yourself, style is part of the fun. Choose one literary device to incorporate
into your draft and observe how it affects the language. Try using a simile,
for example. Similes compare one thing to something completely different. Write
a completely arbitrary simile, then read it aloud to see how it sounds. "I
am like a melting castle" may seem strange at first, but there may be a
kernel of truth there that leads you to your next lines. When you're at a loss
for words, try a new random simile.
