5 Benefits of Writing Poetry for National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month. According to the Academy of American Poets (AAP), which launched the celebration back in 1996, this year (2021) marks the 25^th anniversary of the day established to remind us all of the role poets have to play in our culture.

You may be one of those writers participating in National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo), which is similar to the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) event that takes place every November. Launched in 2003, NaPoWriMo invites writers and poets to write a poem a day throughout the month of April as a way to inspire new creative work.

I was fortunate enough to have one of my early poems, “Baby’s Choice,” published many years ago. It opens the book Chicken Soup for the Expectant Mother’s Soul. I wouldn’t call myself a poet, but I have enjoyed writing poems now and then for fun, and this one, in particular, was a gift from my muse.

I’d encourage all interested writers to take part in NaPoWriMo this year, even if you, like me, don’t consider yourself a poet. Here’s why: Writing poetry is good for you!

1. During National Poetry Month, Write a Poem to Spark Your Imagination

Let’s face it: there are times in a writer’s career when inspiration is hard to find. Often these periods occur after a long stretch of hard work, or when you’re exhausted from your day job and/or life in general.

There’s something more accessible about a poem that can help break through that tired, sapped-out feeling. On those days when your novel or short story may seem a little overwhelming, sit back, relax, and let your imagination play with a poem. What a much better choice than avoiding writing altogether.

“Have you ever sat there and not known what to write?” writes writing coach and editor KM Barkley on Writer’s Digest. “Picking up poetry, reading through different excerpts from classic poets can blossom ideas you never knew existed. Reading and writing poetry makes you think of new ideas, but can also dramatically change the way you perceived old ones.”

Poetry Prompt: Listen to one of your favorite songs. When it finishes, write a poem based on the feelings and emotions it brought about in you.

2. Writing a Poem Gives You a Unique Way to Express Yourself

Raise your hand if you wrote bad poems as a kid or a teenager. (I’m raising my hand.) Few writing forms are as satisfying when it comes to expressing our emotions as poetry. There’s something about pouring our feelings into verse that feels particularly satisfying.

“There are a number of reasons why poetry may be particularly well suited to emotional expression,” writes Linda Wasmer Andrews for Psychology Today. “The use of metaphor and imagery may help the writer give voice to emotional undertones that would otherwise be hard to put into words. The use of rhythm may tap into powerful nonverbal responses, much the way music does. And the abstract nature of poetry may make it easier to take a close look at painful experiences, which might feel too threatening to approach in a direct, literal manner.”

Poetry is even recommended for caregivers and the seniors they care for as a way to release pent-up emotion, exercise creativity, and share thoughts and ideas with other people. Young people know that it can also offer a safe way to release anger and frustration while helping to change negative emotions into more positive ones.

Indeed, poetry is often compared to expressive writing when talking about the therapeutic benefits of writing in general. Just as expressive or “free writing” can help you get your emotions onto the page where they may be easier to deal with, poetry can help foster emotional expression and healing.

(Read more about how freewriting can help you manage writer’s anxiety.)

Poetry Prompt: Think of something that upset you this week. Try to capture what happened in a poem, ending with what the incident had to teach you.

3. National Poetry Month Gives You a Chance to Improve Your Language Skills

Teachers and professors often teach poetry because it is such an effective way to improve language and writing skills. The practice can build vocabulary, encourage alliteration, and increase your ease with metaphors, all of which can benefit your prose writing, too. Finding new ways to articulate your thoughts and feelings challenges your creativity, and forces your brain to work just a little harder.

In poetry, for example, it’s not good to use abstract words like “she feels happy.” Instead, a poet may use a more concrete phrase like, “her tomato cheeks radiated warmth” (as explained on iUniverse). In this way, writing poetry helps you practice coming up with more original ways to describe something or someone.

Writes writing coach Melissa Donavan on Writing Forward:

“Most writing forms attempt to explain something — a scene, a situation, an idea, a set of instructions, an experience. Poetry doesn’t bother to explain. It shows. It paints a picture and pulls you into it….When you master the art of showing readers an idea through imagery, you can easily apply the concept to your other writing, creating work that comes alive in a reader’s mind.”

Poetry Prompt: Recall a favorite holiday (or other) memory and write about it as specifically as you can, so that your reader feels like he or she is there.

4. Writing Poetry Teaches You to Cut Out the Extra

Whereas we can feel free to write as much as we like in stories and novels (particularly in the first draft), when writing poetry, we have to be more concise. The form simply doesn’t forgive excess verbiage, and writing within it can provide the structure we need to improve our ability to get the idea across with fewer yet more hard-hitting words.

“Because poetry is written in smaller chunks,” writes Allison Baldwin on Odyssey, “it forces the reader to convey a lot of meanings and information using few words. Take a haiku, for example. The entire poem is three lines long with exactly 17 syllables. No more, no less. If the writer deviates from the form, they forfeit writing a haiku, instead opting to write something else entirely.”

This focus on brevity also encourages us to use the right words, rather than just any words that might work. We must do away with filler words and look for those that carry their weight and more in the line.

“Poetry forces you to search the language for the perfect word,” writes Kellie McGann on The Write Practice. “Instead of saying how someone ‘slowly walks through the door,’ you might instead say they ‘enter casually.’ In poetry, you must choose each word carefully, as it has to fit with the rhythm and style of the whole piece.”

Poetry Prompt: Think about one of the strangest dreams you’ve ever had, and write a poem about it. Be as concise as you can!

5. National Poetry Month Can Lead to Greater Self-Awareness

Though most any type of writing can lead to greater self-awareness, poetry often encourages us to go even deeper into our own experiences and feelings, which can result in new insights we may not have gained before. In fact, poetry practically demands that we reflect on our own experiences and then use them to communicate to others.

“Writing poetry allows us to tap into our authentic voices, which can lead to self-realization,” writes Diana Raab, Ph.D., on Psychology Today. “It can also be a form of meditation because it encourages a sense of mindfulness and the ability to tap into what we’re feeling, seeing, and experiencing at the moment of writing.”

If you’ve long written poems, you can probably trace your self-development by those poems. They’re likely to reflect your viewpoints and emotions at the time you wrote them—viewpoints and emotions that changed in your later poems.

Parts of the brain tied to daydreaming and memory light up in response to poetry. This could indicate that even reading or hearing poetry encourages self-reflection and introspection. Writing it is likely to do so at an even greater level.

Poetry Prompt: Write a poem to your future self, but do not address that person as your future self. Imagine the person as a superhero, rockstar, or someone else you may admire.

Have you experienced the benefits of writing poetry?