Tips for newer poets!
read poetry! read good poetry, read bad poetry, read poetry about stuff you like and don't like, topics you're familiar with, and ESPECIALLY stuff you're not familiar with. just read.
be specific in general, you want your poem to feel personal while also being memorable. adding some specificity can help with both. I feel like a good way to achieve this is to frame the ideas of your poem in a narrative/story. this also includes avoiding cliches. in most mediums cliches can help effectively establish certain pieces of information and possibly be fun. but using cliches can often subtract from the uniqueness of your writing.
don't directly state your feelings. this one I feel like a lot of new poets struggle with at first. instead of directly stating an emotion, you can convey the same information through other means, like atmosphere and tone. this also helps you deliver an emotional impact. it's hard to feel sad when the writer is telling you that the situation is sad.
be intentional don't make choices "just because." poetry is a very dense medium, and every word, every line break, and every use of punctuation should have a reasoning behind it. sometimes I find that a single line or word in a poem I write can completely contradict everything else I established. sometimes there isn't a concrete explanation for a choice and it's mostly meant to create or add to some kind of vague feeling, and that's okay. As long as you know why you made that choice, it's intentional. 5. ignore any of the rules if you feel like it doesn't work for your writing. this is the golden rule of all writing. often when I give a piece of advice about writing people give highly specific examples where it might not apply. but the truth is there are no hard rules of writing, just guidelines. if it works, it works. if it doesn't, it doesn't.
