Many poems arise out of everyday life- sometimes you may have walked or driven b

Many poems arise out of everyday life- sometimes you may have walked or driven by something a hundred times and suddenly noticed it for the first time. Part of learning to write poetry is learning to look around and observe both the ordinary and the unusual.
Exercise: Spend half an hour walking around outside (on campus or in a parking lot for example). Pay attention to the objects you see. Make a list of five “foreign objects” ( such as a band-aid stuck to a stop sign or a scarf hanging from a tree. Once you made your list try to imagine the story behind the object. Ask yourself how it ended up where you found it. Build a narrative poem around the object. OR Describe the scene in great detail- the land scape surrounding the object, then the object itself. Build a lyric poem around the object.