How to express your true feelings in words on World Poetry Day

Let poetry capture the DNA of your thoughts and feelings. (pic: istockphoto.com/LoopAll)

“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.” Robert Frost

Today is the UN’s World Poetry Day, a celebration of creativity, diversity in language and individual expression in the written word.

Whether you journal regularly, scribble down a few thoughts occasionally, or craft some beautiful prose when the muse strikes, the act of writing your thoughts down without censoring what’s coming out of your pen can be tremendously therapeutic. Here’s how to get in the healing mood for writing in rhyme –  though poems don’t always have to rhyme:

• The act of putting pen to paper and letting it flow can be cathartic. Grab a pen and let your thoughts flow onto the page. 
• A poem is a way of accessing a deeper part of yourself that you perhaps intuited was there but didn’t know for sure if it existed. Let it have some space on the page. 
• Don’t worry about crafting. A poem can be a few lines long, so there’s no pressure to write a lot. 
• Don’t censor as you write. Tell your mind to get out of the way and let something deeper come through. Let the feeling have its rise and fall.
• No one ever sees your words but you, so don’t write as if someone were looking over your shoulder.
• Choose ink colours that represent your mood: try red for anger, blue for sadness, or orange for power. Then experiment with colours you don’t like so much, and see what emerges.
• Stand back and allow the true message to filter through you. Writing a poem can be surprising and revealing when you read it back.
• Enjoy your words. Giving your thoughts a poetry shape can leave you with a huge sense of achievement.
• Appreciate the little piece of you that has found expression in the world.