Dear LPG

I have always been interested in writing, but while the idea of starting a book at my stage of life might excite some, I find it a little unrealistic.  I have had the odd go at producing a verse or two of poetry, although I have never managed to write one that I have thought was good enough for anyone to see but me.  I have real problems making them sound metered or even getting them to rhyme, which usually puts me off.   

There have been times when I feel inspired, and what I want the poem to convey is right there in my head, but I need help to get the words to rhyme while keeping the sense of the thing, and it all results in a lot of screwed-up paper.

I have always known that only some poems have to rhyme conventionally.  Many poem formats don’t have to rhyme at all.   With this idea in my head, I recently tried to find out a little more about some of the non-rhyming formats and armed with that knowledge, I put pen to paper yet again…

Having read about ‘Free verse’, I came up with this…

I am getting older…

I am getting older. 
My knees keep telling me so.
Not with words
But every time I get up. 

They warn me that I might not. 
Manage it successfully. 
Next time

That came from the heart, but if I had just read it, interesting though I might have found it, would it count as a poem in my mind?    I did question its validity as an actual poem, so I had a go at a limerick.

The young lady from Bath

There was a young lady from Bath.
Who, when she smiled, looked quite daft. 
She smiled at me one day. 
But I had nothing to say. 
I could not help it; I just laughed.

That is enough poetic thinking for one day, but I found a list of formats that might help any aspiring poet who has not started yet…  

SD, Deptford 

SD shares what he has learned about poetic format…

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