Write a poem based on a specific memory.

Obviously a memory can be something that happened yesterday, but it's best to write about something that the distance of years has given you a clearer and more objective understanding of. (There are those who believe one shouldn't write about anything that happened less than seven years ago.)  I think for this poem that it's best to stick with personal or family memories.  Before actually writing the first draft of the poem, record in your journal PARTICULARS of that specific memory: colors, smells, the exact year or season. What faces do you remember? Scraps of dialogue? Does anything puzzle you about the memory? In this journal entry, write quickly, going for essential details and physical objects rather than adjectives and descriptive phrases.

Write the first draft of the poem in your journal or notebook.  For this draft, write quickly.   Let the creator work, not the editor. In other words, free write or automatic write. This will help you get through any emotions that may otherwise "block" you. This can also help you to write down things that you didn't know you thought or remembered. Writing poetry is at least in part writing about the unknown and the unknowable and making connections you didn't know were there.  Letting the creator work while the editor remains silent helps you make these connections and discover the unknowable.  You can slow down and pull in the details gathered in the first part of the assignment in later drafts. Also in later drafts, try to work in some music. Experiment with off-rhyme and assonance and alliteration. Think about your sentence lengths and your line lengths.  Go back through the poem and weed out "to be" verbs.

Some suggestions for what you might write about:

1) Write a poem about the last time you saw

a) a particular person
b) a particular place
c) a particular object

2) Write a poem in which something in the present reminds you of something in the past.

3) Write a poem about an experience as it was in the past, but end with some insight that comes from looking back at the experience from any later time in life.


Whatever memory you choose, it should be a memory about which you feel STRONGLY—Strong emotions written in particular and concrete details are the muscles and bones of a good poem. For this poem, please do NOT make up a memory or a story, but write about a real experience in your life.

Remember—don't try to write an entire life into one poem, but only moments of a life.  And of course use concrete and vivid details and images and your everyday common language—intensified and compressed.

This exercise was taken from course materials prepared by Judy Jordan,
Southern Illinois University