If your reason for writing a poem is to tell a story about something you experienced, you should go ahead and write what you feel. However, if you want the ability to communicate with any reader and create an emotional response from him/her, you simply can’t just write what feels right. The following are some tips that can help you to take advantage of the established conventions of poetry.

Know your objective

This tip really applies to any piece of literary work. If you have no idea where you are headed, then how can you even set off on a journey? As a poet you need to know what you wish to accomplish with the poem. Do you want a poem to protest an injustice, describe a life changing event, or simply describe the serenity of nature? When you have a goal, you can write to conform to that goal.

Avoid clichés

A poem full of clichés is just like a serving of leftovers. It is unappetizing. Authors must avoid clichés because they indicate a lack of creative talent and work against the intended communication. Readers want work that feels original and clichés surely don’t help. Even if a poem is quite good, if it is full of clichés, it shows that the author cannot give anything above the ordinary. You can, however, take a cliché, strip it to its bare bones, and come up with a unique phrase to carry the same meaning as the cliché.

Don’t be sentimental

Sentimentality detracts from the quality of a work. If a poem is blatantly trying to evoke emotional responses from readers, they are more likely to rebel against the author’s effort. When readers are confronted by an overly sentimental poem, they are unable to think about the message in the poem as they try to fight off their disapproval of the author’s work.

Use of images

A poem should paint vivid pictures in people’s minds. Using just words, a poet should stimulate all the senses of a reader. A poet should produce striking images that make his readers visualize what he was thinking of when writing the poem.

Use similes and metaphors

An author should use similes and metaphors to bring imagery into his poems. They should be used to stir the imaginations of readers and to add more details to the poem without unnecessary use of words.

Replace abstract words with concrete ones

A concrete word is one that describes things that people can sense. For instance, orange, warm, and sweet are all concrete words because they can be felt. Abstract words, however, describe feelings or concepts. For instance, liberty, happiness, and love are all abstract.

Create a theme

People often confuse topics with themes. For instance, history is not a theme for a poem but a topic. A theme is similar to a topic but it has an attached opinion. For example, although people claim to desire peace, everyone has a hidden dream of conquering his enemies through conflict. The topic here could be peace or conflict but the opinion expressed makes it a theme.