5 Strategies to Actually Enjoy Reading Poetry (+ Recommendations!)

Yeah, I don't really "get" poetry. Poetry is too complicated. Poetry goes over my head. It's pretentious. It's for English major nerds. It's definitely not for me.

These phrases or variants of them are probably things you've either said sometime in life, or you've heard someone else say. I have definitely both said them and heard them said. Poetry is often thought of as complicated work that is hard to understand and inaccessible to most people.

Well, I'm hear to tell you, no longer!

I've gotten a lot more into reading poetry lately, mostly the result of a writer's festival I'm volunteering for. A lot of the writers I was unfamiliar with, so I thought I should read some of their work. Most of them turned out to be poets, so I ended up checking out a bunch of poetry books from the library and fell in LOVE.

Anyway here are some things I've kept in mind while reading poetry that have helped make it an entirely more enjoyable experience*:

1. Just read 

Read poetry as you would any other book - for enjoyment, line by line, taking in the words. You don't have to worry about extracting a certain meaning from the text because this is your reading time. Don't worry too much about trying to understand the poem either, just kind of let the words wash over you how they will. Getting frustrated that you aren't getting something is a sure fire way of taking the fun out of reading poetry.


2. Skip poems you don't like

Is there a poem that puts you off, or is just way too out there for you no matter how many times you reread it? Instead of feeling like a failure for not understanding great art, acknowledge that subjective experience is a thing and you won't click with every poem. The fun thing about poetry books is they include a whole bunch of poems - some that will click with you and make you feel like you were punched in the gut, and others that you'll breeze through and never think about again.


3. Let them connect with you where you're at

One of the cool things about poetry is how they can really deeply speak to someone's experience. A certain poem you read may really impact you and speak to where your life or mindset is at the moment, and that's the really powerful, fun part of reading poetry. Hold on to those moments. Save your favourite poems to reread later when you're in that emotional space.


4. You don't have to read everything

Just like anything else, not all poems are for everyone! Find poems that *you* enjoy reading. There are so many different ways of writing poetry out there. Some styles might annoy you, so just stay away from those! Your pretentious artist cred won't be damaged if you skip over poems you don't like for ones you enjoy. Maybe you like T.S. Eliot. Maybe Rupi Kaur's simple but elegant style is more for you.

5. Don't care what other people think

Poetry is often given a bad image (mainly from terrible high school English classes, at least in my experience). In some literary circles, you can be put down from liking certain kinds of poets or liking poets that use language in a more direct way. You can be made to feel stupid for not understanding or liking old classic poets (probably old white men anyway), or childish for following your favourite Instagram poets. But I say poetry should be consumed and enjoyed, whatever way you might wish to do that. So don't care about the pretentious literary snobs. They aren't having as much fun as you.

So, now that you're super excited to get into poetry, where should you start? Well, I've got some great recommendations for you:

#IndianLovePoems by Tenille K. Campbell is a collection of poems on Indigenous intimacy, sexuality, love and family, interwoven with Indigenous cultural images. The poems are quick and easy to read, but they are also hilarious and bold. It's a stunning and confident collection which you should go read right now.

This Wound is a World by Billy-Ray Belcourt knocked me off my feet from the very first poem. I would dog-ear the entire book if I wasn't borrowing it from the library (I will buy it asap don't worry). These poems focus on themes of Indigenous and queer identity, and the sadness that can be encompassed in that, but also the beauty of feeling that sadness. Belcourt says in his afterword that his book is "nothing if not a tribute to the potentiality of sadness" and that sharing the feeling of being lonely or alone is a way to make new forms of collectivity. His poems are absolutely heartbreaking but in the best, most cathartic way.









questions i asked my mother by Di Brandt was a book that shook up Mennonite communities when it was first published, and it still has the potential to speak to religious communities today, with commentary included in her poems on traditional religious roles, traditional communities, patriarchy, women’s speech and sexuality. It presents these themes in beautiful unstructured poems that have incredible depth to them.

Unstable Neighbourhood Rabbit by Mikko Harvey is an absolutely fascinating collection of poems that turns the world on its head. These are the kinds of poems that after you've finished them you feel like you've been punched in the gut because they turn out to be about something different than you originally thought. I had the opportunity to hear the title poem of this book read aloud by Harvey, and after he finished it you could literally hear the audience exclaim under their breath in awe and wonder.

Well, there you have it. You now have all the tools to be a poetry connoisseur, and be exposed to some great, world-changing writing.







*Disclaimer: while these strategies can be useful for enjoying poetry again, they should not be used for poetry analysis for classes. Although I've found knowing how to analyze poetry actually aids in my enjoyment sometimes! However, this is basically just a guide to remove some barriers and get you started. 

I Wrote A Poem Every Day in December!

How it all started:

• a friend of a friend of mine has an Instagram account for her cat, with a twist: every time she posts a picture of her cat, she captions it with a haiku. 
• NaNoWriMo was going on, and while NaNo still kind of scares me, I've gotten closer and closer to doing it, and I liked the idea of writing something every day.
• I've also been thinking about and writing more poetry lately, and I wanted to do more of it.

So I thought, why not try doing a sort of poem diary thing, and write a poem every day in December? I only missed two days, and by the end of December I ended up with 29 poems, which is more poems than I've written since like, 2011.

So, here are some things that I learned while doing this December poem diary project:

1. I have no idea how to actually write poems

I realized while doing this project that while I write poems, I haven't really studied it or read about how to write poems or anything. I don't really know the techniques or the various structures or anything beyond what I learned in middle school. That brings me to my next point...

2. I should read more poetry

Poetry is a weird thing, because it's not something that I've been taught to sit down and read for fun. The most interaction I've had with poetry is in various English classes I've taken, and I really enjoy that but I don't take the time to do it on my own. But poetry can be really powerful, and I really want to read more of it. One of the things that has made me consider buying poetry books (like North End Love Songs by Katherena Vermette) is the enthusiasm of one of the hosts on Literary Disco for poetry. It made me think, oh, people buy and read poetry books for fun? I guess I could do that... I'm always looking for ways to expand my reading tastes!

3. You can be inspired every day if you look for it

There's this idea that floats around that if you wait, inspiration will just come to you. And sometimes it does, but sometimes you have to work for it. Every night I would sit down with my notebook and think, okay, what happened today? What thoughts or feelings did I have today that I want to capture? And then I would try my best to put it into a poem. Once I actually sat down and tried to think of things to write, there was a lot more to write about than I thought.

4. It is a lot harder to think of ideas if you don't go outside

What's that saying? In order to write, you need to live? Well, since I was off school for a lot of December, I spent a lot of time just at home, and it is really hard to think of ideas for a daily poem when you don't do much in the day... so basically, get outside! See the world!

5. Writing helps process things

Last year I had to watch an interview with Miriam Toews for a class, and in that interview she talked about how each of the books she's written have helped her process things in her own life. (Watch that interview, and then read her books Swing Low: A Life, All My Puny Sorrows and A Complicated Kindness.) I've never really had that experience until this year, with the book I wrote, and this poem diary thing. It is interesting looking back on the poems I wrote this month and seeing how there's a theme woven through it, and how the poems are about struggling with something at the beginning of the month to accepting it and being more content at the end.

Just some things I learned! What have you learned while writing lately?

Some Poetry For Your Monday

I don't write a lot of poetry, and most of what I do write is pretty bad. I did write a poem last year when I was in the Philippines that I kind of like. (I mean, it's not perfect). But I like it because when I read it, it brings me right back to sitting over the soccer field at the school, listening to the sounds of the city.

sounds of manila

I sit

The city
a giant star-pricked quilt
folds over my knees
and covers
the feet of my ears

I listen to the percussion,

Barking dogs
obnoxious horns
the phlegmy roar of
motorcycle engines

Together,
an indistinct monster of noise

and above that,
the tinkle of children laughing
as they play
in the streets
tsinelas slap-slapping on the bottoms
of calloused brown soles

and the music:

operatic women exalting Mary,

skirt-twirling Spanish celebration
braided roughly
into one
 
My heart does not swell at the sound because
there are no violins
 
yet
 
this is not a symphony
but the sound
of people

---

The other poem I like is not very good with language or really anything, but I like it because I figured it out that you read each line down, and then back up again to the top and it actually makes sense. It actually took quite a long time to figure out. (I think it's called a palindrome poem?) To read it, you read each individual line down and then read each individual line back up to the top.

Letting Go

Leave

I want you to never
come back
walk out of sight
don’t
tear your eyes from sunlit horizons
while you are trudging onward
open your eyes to the world
never
think of me
always
warm your heart
with the sunlit horizon
forget everything you once held here
but don’t
leave.