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Episode:

Celebrate National Poetry Month with the Jefferson Exchange
Category: News & Politics
Duration: 00:00:00
Publish Date: 2023-04-03 15:59:35
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Here's what to do: Email a written and audio version of your original poem to JXProducer@SOU.edu . Include your name and the town you live in.  The audio doesn’t have to be fancy, your phone’s voice recorder or any digital form is fine.  All month, we’ll update our JX web page with a sampling of the poems we receive and we’ll choose some to air on the Exchange.

If you need a little nudge getting started, Amy Miller, the poetry editor for JPR’s Jefferson Journal offers the following tips:

  • Keep an ongoing list of poem ideas, even kooky-sounding ones. “That time a gopher chased me.” “The smell of pizza and the memories it triggers.” That way you won’t forget good ideas, and later, when you’re stuck for something to write about, you’ll have a whole list of interesting topics to choose from.
  • When using similes (this thing is like this other thing), make them as wild and unexpected as possible. If you think of one simile (“his eyes were like mahogany”), reach farther for a second one (“his eyes were like cold Coca-Cola”) and then a third (“his eyes were like Bing cherries in a jar”). Choose one of the more unusual ones. This puts an original stamp on your writing. Surprise the reader.
  • Take something that happened in the past, and write it in present tense. Pare out as much explanation as possible, and describe it with sensory images as if it’s happening right now. What do you see, hear, taste? How much information can you leave out and still have an interesting, sense-rich poem?
  • Take a cliché that’s been written about many times—“my grandchild is cute,” or “I am at peace in nature”—and add a “but” to it and elaborate on that. Write about that much-used topic, but put some grit in it to make it entirely new and yours.

Whatever you do, have fun with it!
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