National Poetry Day is on Thursday this week – the theme is CHOICE. Today I have a poem about choosing words!
How do you choose just the right word for a poem? Do you use the one you first think of? Sometimes that IS the correct word – poem lines should be easy to read and use direct language.
But if you read the poem as a whole, and notice a repeat, or realise a word doesn’t express precisely what you were trying to say – or think of another word that is alliterative and makes the poem more interesting to say out loud – then it can be changed.
Here’s my poem about choosing words for a poem!
Choosing Words
Place to match the pattern with no seams
Or to clash with a dissonance that pleases
Use no jam that sits stickily on the tongue
Slice them with a scalpel, make them bleed
Hurl them, leave an outline on the paper
Breathe them gently into being to goose-bump skin
Keep some grounded but pin others to the sky
Feather all so together they form wings
Then read your poem out, and let it fly
Liz Brownlee
Poetry Roundabout 