How to Write a Poem in 2021 by Carol A. Stephen (HOW TO Series)

How to Write a Poem in 2021
by Carol A. Stephen

Ten a.m. Sit at your desk, assemble writing tools.
Start computer. Don’t write yet. First,
check fourteen emails and five unrelated subject links.

Time for coffee, tea if you prefer.
Sit at your desk. Play two computer games.
Make it three. Oh, just one more for luck.

Search computer for a prompt. Send an email
telling your friend how you have writer’s block.
Bathroom break. Sit at your desk.

Make a list of words to include in a poem.
Ten words. Strike out five. Add another ten.
Lunch break.

Sit at your desk. Read through other poets’ poems
for inspiration. Gaze out the window, check the weather.
Write a line.

Aha! We’re getting somewhere! But— it’s now 5 p.m.
Spend 15 minutes writing. Sign your poem.
Done for today.

PAINTING: Writing by Zhang Xiaogang (2005).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Writing on the computer is often fraught with rabbit holes and distractions. What I start out to write first thing in the morning may not see the light of day ‘til it’s almost time to call it a day. During the pandemic, this has intensified, as the uncertainty of day-to-day isolation draws down energy and initiative at times.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Carol A. Stephen poetry appears in Poetry Is Dead, June 2017 and numerous print publications, including Wintergreen Studios chapbooks, Sound Me When I’m Done, and Teasing the Tongue. Online poems appear at Silver Birch Press, Topology Magazine, The Light Ekphrastic, and With Painted Words. Carol won Third prize in the CAA National Capital Writing Contest, and was featured in Tree’s Hot Ottawa Voices. She served on the board for Canadian Authors Association-NCR and co-directed Ottawa’s Tree Reading Series. Carol has five chapbooks, two released in 2018: Unhook, catkin press, Carleton Place, and Lost Silence of the Small, Local Gems Press, Long Island, New York  In 2019, Winning the Lottery, Surviving Clostridium Difficile was published by Crowe Creations.ca. Currently, she is working on the manuscript for her first full poetry collection.