How to Seed a Poem: 10 Easy Steps to Get the Garden (Poetry) Party Started
“A flower blossoms for its own joy.”
—Oscar Wilde, letter to R. Clegg
Starting a garden, or a poem, from scratch can often feel daunting. Overwhelming, even. And sometimes, starting a poem can feel like standing in front of a patch of dirt with no idea what to plant. The good news is that you do not need to know, at least not yet.
Lucky for you all, cultivating a poetic thumb is surprisingly user-friendly and fun!
A poem can start with almost anything (or nothing at all): a scrap of paper, a word on a turnpike advertisement, a smell, a question, or a phrase overheard while waiting in line at the DMV. And more! A Bic pen. A grocery receipt. A muddy shoe by the bedroom door. A flower you do not know the name of.
Start there.
One seed. Even one weed. One word.
See what comes up and see what else it brings.
Inhale, then breathe poetic relief. Prepare to seed originality.
Sneeze away any pollen or poetic hesitation.
Ready? Grab a bucket full of anticipation and a bucket (Bic) of ink.
This step-by-step guide to seeding a garden bouquet (poetry collection) is welcoming to all!
1. Survey your landscape
To prepare, go nowhere.
Start wherever you are.
Survey the landscape, whatever it might be.
Take note of the birds, the bees, and all objects moving or stationary. Inhale your surroundings. Scavenge for sensory meaning.
Focus on the kitchen table. The bus stop. The backyard. The laundromat.
Look for anything or anyone doing something or doing nothing at all.
A tulip leaning like it hears gossip. A trash can lid full of rainwater. A bee with office-manager energy. A cracked flowerpot. A receipt in your coat pocket from a place you barely remember. A Mr. Softee truck. One striped sock, unclaimed, on a basketball court.
Do not decide what the object means. Just notice it. Use words to capture its qualities.
Poems like to hide in plain sight. Keep looking.
2. Start small
Actually, start smaller than small.
Start with one tiny thing. The smallest of (p)lots.
A flower’s posture. A bird’s song. A smell. A color. A question.
Something that drops in a neighbor’s garden.
Maybe:
The dandelion looked guilty.
The garden smelled like wet laundry.
A robin poked the lawn like it had lost something.
The hose made a nest for itself.
Someone left a white glove on a fence, waving at no one.
That is enough to find your own way in.
One seed. One weird and tiny bean.
A (p)lot well suited to unexpected pairings
3. Let the wrong thing turn (b)right
Maybe you think you are writing about a sunflower.
Then, without any warning, the sunflower turns into your grandmother’s kitchen, or that weekend getaway, or the lotto ticket machine at the old pharmacy.
Let your thoughts drift. Let them misbehave.
Poems are not always good at staying in their assigned seats.
They wander. They touch things.
They are often messy.
They bring mud into the house.
They build new homes out of familiar territory.
Welcome this messiness and then follow the unexpected journey.
4. Let the first draft make a mess
Once words start to fall like the rain, don’t take cover. Let the natural elements saturate the grounded paper.
Don’t stop until you sense the running water turning into a dripping faucet. Let the page get muddy. Let the sentence run on. Let the poem knock over a watering can and track (s)oil across the floor.
Write the boring lines. Write the strange lines, too.
Write the line that sounds like nothing you can use.
Let your lines do what they wish to do. Don’t worry about constraining.
What grows now can be refined later.
Do not prune; not yet. That’s for another day of play.
5. Pick wisely
Some words are polite. Others are less forgiving.
Some words enter quietly. Others come with organic groceries, strung beads, stinging bees, and even a cracked ceramic frog or ladybug named Liberty.
Choose the latter kind of seeding. Look for unexpected phrasing in dictionaries, on bookshelves, and in old magazines.
Pick words with strong pigments and unforgettable scents.
Welcome flavors with international and historical character.
Consider rotating schedules and planting new words. Visit a local library for free packets of inspiration. Tread freely. Read widely.
Instead of writing about a “flower,” pick a zinnia, a pansy, a thistle, a dried blue bottom, a dead marigold in a jelly jar, or a grocery-store bouquet wrapped in yesterday’s newspaper.
Instead of describing something as “nice,” call it sticky, tinny, bruised, peppery, sun-warmed, lopsided, sour, velvet, sugar-dusted, or suspiciously clean.
Let your words do something unexpected. Let them surprise you.
6. Loiter near inspiration’s intrepid opening
Test and iterate on your soil’s pigmented properties.
Water generously. Sprinkle description and vivid imagery generously.
The public library is a greenhouse with fewer mosquitoes and infinite opportunities to travel.
Wander. Pull down the wrong book on purpose. And then do it again.
Keep writing. Repeat without rinsing. Keep writing.
Flip through field guides. Cookbooks. A book about birds. A book about weeds. Pamphlets on local history. Maps of the world. A farmer’s almanac. A children’s book about worms. A poetry book someone has underlined in crayon. A book that’s so crisp it looks as if it has never been held.
Read a passage. Read a single sentence. Read a word backwards.
Start on the final page and write a new beginning.
Don’t forage to become an expert. Simply let your brain bump into random things and take notes on the journey.
7. Clear a little patch of ground
Add what you gather to your emerging document.
Before you mess with your poem in progress, make a little room for more of the unexpected.
Clear the ground (setting) of debris. Remove visible weeds.
Move the coffee cup. Mute the phone. Ignore the laundry’s rattle. Close the email browser.
Choose your own folklore for fodder.
Consider background tunes, as they, too, are known for their generative properties.
Turn up the music if music helps. Or don’t. Let the refrigerator perform its low-budget opera. Let the dog sigh dramatically. Let the neighbor’s leaf blower become a villain in your emerging story.
Poems don’t need perfect conditions. They just need enough room to keep their audience guessing.
8. Read your work out loud
Read your draft out loud. Start pruning.
Be careful not to trip.
Track the recitation for its own necessary trimming.
You will hear the wobbly parts and the dry patches.
Make notes of the lines that work to explain themselves.
Mark those for cutting.
Rely on all senses. Inhale, but also touch, listen, and taste to optimize and fertilize the poetic experience.
Add a fresh detail where the poem feels thin. Cut a sentence that wilts when you read it. Swap phrases just to see what happens.
Consider this like repotting a plant and hoping it sings back its blessings.
9. Save the scraps
Whenever you cut, do not throw anything away.
Keep a little pile.
Keep track of versions and half-grown seeds with labels and file names.
Reflect on your process for planting new leads. Save plucked petals and stray twigs.
Call the file “stray petals,” “garden scraps,” “lines with potential,” “weird bits,” or “do not delete.” Add a date. Don’t forget version control.
The line that does not belong in this poem may be the first line of the next one.
Perhaps it’ll bloom a poem of its own one day soon.
A twig today. A whole shrub later.
Workshop the poem that’s left when you don’t know what else to do.
10. Make a bouquet
After a while, you may have a few poems.
A sunflower poem. A receipt poem. A laundromat poem. A grief poem that pretends it’s a piece about tomatoes. A haiku with mud on its shoes. A list poem constructed of weeds. A stubborn phrase that refuses to lose steam.
That is your bouquet.
No one gets to decide its correct size or its delivery day. One poem can be a posy. Ten can be a garden party. A whole collection can be a field of daffodils and a single folding chair.
After pruning and having ample time to inhale the fresh scent of fresh words, pick a varied group for a bouquet of collected poetry. Share widely with friends, family, and the literary community.
Repeat.
Share what you grow.
Spread the joy of poetry.
Read one to a friend. Tuck one in your pocket. Tape one above your desk. Leave one inside a library book or on a Walmart shelf. Why not? It’s harmlessly dramatic.
Whatever your plotted pathway, gift what you grow. Give a poem away the way you would a flower. Recite one on the subway. Tape one to a stoplight. Offer a poem like you would a posy to a friend or a neighbor, however nosy.
***
A few strange garden facts, because why not
Poinsettia “flowers” are not really flowers.
The bright red parts are leaves. Showing off? Perhaps.
Sunflowers are not one flower either.
They are made of many tiny flowers crowded together.
If poinsettia “flowers” aren’t even flowers,
and sunflowers come in many forms, rethink
the standard poem and see what blooms!
Maybe a poem does not have to be one neat thing either.
It can be a list. A receipt. A complaint.
A field note. A recipe. A letter. A question.
A poem can be a rose in a vase, of course.
But it can also be crabgrass through the sidewalk.
***
FAQ for new poetry gardeners
How long should a poem be?
As long as it wants to be.
Do I need to know what it means?
No, meaning is always a matter of perspective.
What should I write about?
Anything. There is no wrong subject.
What if it is bad?
That’s what you call a work in progress.
When is it finished?
When the words stop arguing with you and themselves.
Or, when you’re tired of debating their existence.
Both are valid reasons to call a poem a complete version.
***
One last seed
Write one line today.
Something small. Something green.
Something with dirt still on its seams.
Tomorrow, write another.
That is how the garden starts.
No garden needs to be perfect, and no poem does, either. The gift of words is akin to a line in the Farmer’s Almanac. Prop the Bic and soak in a sun-drenched experience. It’s no wonder poetry is secretly known as an alternate form of sunshine therapy.
Jennifer Schneider is a community college educator who lives, works, and writes in small spaces in and around Philadelphia.
