On your marks! Get set! Get writing!

Morning all!

The Marriott Love Poems poetry search is officially open now!  It’s time to pen your poem and enter via www.marriottlovepoems.com

You can find out all the details including terms and conditions on the website.

The closing date for poem submission is 31^st March 2011.

Best of luck to you all!

Some poetic inspiration...

If you’re looking for some inspiration, Matt Harvey, renowned poet and a judge on the Marriott Love Poems panel, will be sharing some of his love and marriage poems from his collection The Hole in the Sum of my Parts (The Poetry Trust), with us here on the blog over the next few days, to help get your creative juices flowing!

Today’s poem is She Said To Him.

Enjoy!

She Said To Him

She said to him, “You’re not the man I married.
You’ve changed,” she said, “I hardly recognize

the man who swept me off my feet, who carried

his young bride across the threshold. He was nice.

And kind, and confident. A little brash.

but – what for me back then was the decider –

he had a steady job. Ah, I was rash.

I saw him principally as a provider.

I knew what I desired, not what I needed.

In life you’re not recalled from a false start,

you run the race regardless – that’s what we did.

I gave my hand before I gave my heart.”

She added, then, before he got too worried:

“I love you far more than the man I married.”

Happy Writing!

Time to get poetic!

So, the Marriott Love Poems search launches this week!  We hope you are all feeling poetic and ready to put pen to paper…  To get you in the right frame of mind for writing a prize-winning poem about love or marriage, judge and editor of Poetry Review magazine, Fiona Sampson gives you her all important top five tips:

1) Write what you know.  You know about your own experience of love, for example.

2) Big, abstract words don't tell us anything new.  The devil's in the detail - show the readers what you mean.

3) Traditional rhyme and completely free verse are equally fashionable.  But whatever you pick, stick to it!

4) Read your poem aloud. It needs to work out loud even more than as a pattern on the page.  If something sounds odd, or it's embarrassing - change it!

5) Don't rush it.  This is your poem and it's worth getting right. None of the poems, or lyrics, you have ever heard of are first drafts.  You are writing the poem, not the Muse (she doesn't exist!) so change the bits that aren't so good, and make them better.

Now, go and digest these tips and have a few practice runs before you can enter your wedding or love poem at www.marriottlovepoems.com later this week.

Happy Writing!