5 Tips for Poets Breaking Through Writer's Block
1. Write Bad Poems on Purpose
Writer's block often comes from the pressure to write something good. When you sit down determined to write the perfect poem, you paralyze yourself before you start. Instead, commit to writing something terrible.
Set a timer for ten minutes and write the worst poem you can imagine. Use clichés, make it sentimental, rhyme "love" with "dove." The goal is to move your hand across the page without judgment. Often, something interesting emerges from the wreckage.
This exercise works because it removes the stakes. You're not trying to create art—you're just playing with language. And play is where creativity lives. Some of my best poems started as intentionally bad ones that took an unexpected turn.
2. Steal First Lines from Novels
When you're stuck, open any book to a random page and use the first complete sentence you see as your poem's opening line. Don't worry about it making sense—just follow where it leads you.
This technique works because it bypasses the blank page problem. You're not starting from nothing—you're responding to something that already exists. The constraint forces you to be creative within boundaries, which often produces more interesting results than complete freedom.
You can delete the borrowed line later if you want, but often it transforms so much in the context of your poem that it becomes genuinely yours. The goal is to get your brain moving, not to plagiarize.
3. Write in Grocery Stores
Poetry happens everywhere, not just at your desk. Carry a small notebook and write in places where you overhear conversations, observe human behavior, and encounter the mundane details that make great poems.
Grocery stores are perfect because they're full of specific details: brand names, overheard conversations, the particular way people behave when they're focused on their lists. These details ground your poems in the real world and make them more accessible to readers.
The point isn't to write polished poems in public—it's to capture raw material that you can work with later. Some of my best poems started as grocery store observations that I developed weeks later.
4. Copy Poems You Love by Hand
This old-fashioned exercise teaches you how great poems work in ways that just reading them cannot. When you copy a poem by hand, you feel the rhythm in your muscles, notice the line breaks more carefully, and absorb the poet's decision-making process.
Choose poems you love but don't fully understand. The act of copying forces you to slow down and pay attention to every word choice, every punctuation mark, every structural decision. You'll start to understand why the poet made certain choices.
Don't copy to imitate—copy to learn. After you've copied a few poems by the same poet, you'll start to see patterns in their work that you can adapt to your own voice and concerns.
5. Change Your Writing Tool
If you always write on a computer, try a pen. If you always use a pen, try typing. If you always write in a notebook, try loose sheets of paper. Small changes in your physical writing process can unlock different parts of your brain.
Different tools encourage different kinds of thinking. Handwriting tends to be more associative and less linear. Typing encourages revision and rearrangement. Voice recording captures the natural rhythm of speech.
The goal isn't to find the "right" tool—it's to keep your creative process flexible. When you're stuck with one approach, switching tools can help you see your work from a new angle.