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!