How to Write Like a Poet

                For learners of English as a foreign language, writing seems to be the most difficult among the four language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The degree of difficulty varies from person to person, depending on how much the learners have exposed to using the language. As for now, let’s see how we can write eloquently like a poet.

                A poet is known for his/her ability to create a world through words, and “creativity” is the one attribute that sets a poet apart from other and common people. Creativity is indeed a living brush for a poet to paint the colors of his/her world, although mostly regarded as surreal, imaginary, or free from any conventional boundaries and limitations. Not surprisingly, a poet’s affluent creativity mainly comes from his/her unfailing use of sensory organs such as eyes, ears, nose, and mouth that consequently produce vivid sensory perceptions of vision, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. We should then train our mind to be alert and our heart to be keen and receptive, enough to fully perceive the many colorful nuances of the world before we could create one as a poet.

                Besides creativity from the careful use of sensory organs, a poet develops a habit to play with words and language when writing. To make his/her writing memorable, startling, distinctive, evocative, or different from ordinary writers, a poet often uses figurative languages such as simile, metaphor, and personification. A simile is a powerful figure of speech used to compare two different nouns/noun phrases (things, events, or persons) which the poet believes to be similar in essence. Though there are variations, a simile is often found in this formula: N1 + as + adjective/adverb + as + N2. For example, “His explanation is as clear as a day.” “Her word of love for him is as crooked as a filthy politician.” The little girl can write as beautifully as the poet she dearly admires.” Similar to a simile, a metaphor is a figure of speech used to compare two different nouns/noun phrases, but in this case conveying a much stronger sense of likeness and without the use of as…as. A metaphor formula is: N1 + be + N2.  For example, “Her tongue is a knife.” “My children are my world.” “Backbiting and slander are hellfire.” As far as the personification is concerned, it is to make a non-human or inanimate thing act like a human being, e.g. “The soft breeze nicely whispers in my ear.” “That accusation hit her head real hard.” “Your sincere smile smiles sweetly in my heart.” As we can see, these three figures of speech are writing tools that can turn a simple message into something more exciting, colorful, and creative.

                In short, creativity and a play of language are the two things that can make our writing richly electric with poetic beauty. The good news is both of these are not out of reach, especially for those who wish to be well-versed and eloquent in writing. Keep practicing not to take people and things at face value, but dig deep and wide until we understand their root causes and true colors. Doing like this is a good way to accumulate knowledge and experiences from people and things around us. With such wealth of knowledge in store, we can explore new and creative ways to convey our message in writing. Finally, “practice makes perfect” never fails anyone who faithfully loves learning.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Tipchan Wongchanta