Poems are beautiful to read and therefore, not easy to write. There are certain things you need to follow while writing a poem of which, I know nothing. Honestly, if I knew how to write a poem, I’d have written a goddamn poem instead of luring you into reading this post. But since I have lured you anyway, read on. Perhaps I might be of some help.

A few days ago I attended a seminar for writers by writers which was roughly about how to write a poem and why is writing a poem important. Now I don’t have a thing against seminars but I don’t have a thing for seminars either. The reason for this is, as far as I can remember every seminar I have ever attended has been a very useless affair minus the free coffee. That part is good. So anyway I attended this seminar where I was feeling like a horny man would feel if he was castrated and sent to a strip club. Wanting it but not excited at all. Ranting endlessly in the shoes of the speakers and not letting me enjoy my coffee in peace, were two men who claimed that they were poets. Both of them had reached the age where you need a lot of ego massage and where everyone else in the world looks like a foolish bastard. Other words they were somewhere in their late 50s and spoke a lot about their own poems but forgot the part where they were supposed to tell us about how to write our poems. Now I don’t know much about poems but after listening to what the speakers had to say – and yes, I could only listen, there was no room for seeing anything that happened on the dais thanks to the old lady with a saggy booty who sat right in front of me and did something with her phone which could be easily mistaken for weight lifting which had apparently blocked my view.

Sometimes I wish I was taller. This was one of those times.

So anyway, after two hours of continuous looking at her phone and listening to the speakers I realized two things:

1. The woman had incredibly strong hands for her age.
2. After listening to the wise words of two poets for about 120 minutes, none of the people who had gathered there to bag the know-how of writing a poem knew anything new about writing a poem at all.

This led me to wonder how really should one write a poem which also led me to realize that there is no certain manner of writing a poem in the first place, which justifies why the speakers talked about their poems for two hours. They didn’t know how to write a poem because perhaps no one does. Poems happen. You can’t possibly sit down and plan a poem because that would kill the very essence of any poem which happens to be spontaneity. And again, spontaneity doesn’t necessarily lead you to write something extra-ordinary always. You will write hundreds of bad poems and that’s fine because that doesn’t mean you’re a bad poet. With every bad poem you’re putting together, you are getting closer to writing an excellent one.

Another thing I saw in the seminar and that worried me a little was how some writers are programmed to think. While sipping the free coffee and munching on the free sandwiches and talking to pretty ladies I somehow found myself talking to a poet who could write beautiful poetry using simple lines but chose to complicate it he believed complicating the poem would make it look more substantial and essentially impressive. Now look, a poem doesn’t exactly have to be very complicated lest you believe that a good poem requires some difficult words and odd rhyme schemes. That’s like making a painting incomprehensible with odd shapes and odd color-schemes so that it can be called ‘contemporary art’ by snobs who don’t know one thing about paintings. Know what I’m saying? Don’t try to write an attractive poem. Just write a poem and if it is good enough in all its complexion, it will arrest and engage the attention of the very many. And finally, the last rule you should follow while writing a poem is, not follow any rule. Know why? Because you’re a god-damn poet!

(Chances are you might ask me if I have ever written a poem, so yes, I have and I reckon you could read one of those, so here it is.)