This week's topic: Anything at all.
It's already the eight week of these prompts, believe it or not. I therefore thought it would be a nice idea to let you decide what you want to write about. Show me what you've been dying to write a poem about, but never had the opportunity to. No rules, no guidelines, write something you want to write.
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This week's optional requirement: Write a poem in free verse.
In the past few weeks, we've focused focused pretty much on different technicalities of writing poetry: metre, rhyme, general form, etc. This week, we're stepping away from the more classical forms of poetry, with their strict requirements of form, and focus on free verse.
Briefly said, free verse is poetry without restrictions. Basic elements of classical poetry like rhyme and metre are not necessary if you want to write free verse, nor are any real guidelines. Instead, free verse allows the poet to write a poem that they themselves think sounds good.
While this sounds easy, in practice it might be difficult to write a poem that appeals to more readers besides yourself, of becomes a random, meaningless mess of words. Generally speaking, an even greater emphasis on the choice for certain words and phrases, to ensure a certain structure or quality, is thereby placed on free verse than with 'classical' poetry.
Instead of monotonous lists of words, poets that write free verse generally try to elucidate a certain rhythm by choosing certain words. This doesn't mean that they adhere to metre, like in the poems for previous weeks, nor do their rhythms have to be consisted throughout the poem; but they do make sure that every word they put on paper sounds good in its proper place.
Authors like Whitman furthermore ensure a certain form of structure and rhythm throughout their poetry through the use of punctuation, besides their choice of words. Stops and pauses can for example be suggested through line-breaks and commas.
And that's already all for this week. As free verse, as the title implies, focuses on a poet's freedom to write what they want to write, all you have to remember for this week is:
Free verse: Poetry without any strict guidelines, as long as it sounds good.
Have fun writing!
