4 of 10

Write now Article Tools

Writing a love poem can be tough. Sometimes it seems that everything you might want to say about the person you love has already been said by someone else.

Do you feel like you'll die without them? Countless swains have said this about their loved ones, in conversation, in pop songs and in poetry. Are your tears falling because you are missing someone? Maybe they're even falling so steadily it feels metaphorical: "My tears are falling like rain." Even if it's true, someone has said it, just like that. Try some comparisons to natural phenomena i.e. the sun, the moon, the stars. Hmm. It's romantic. It's pretty. But it's been done. And when something has been done, and done, and done, it falls into the realm of cliche.

What is a cliche? It's the literary version of, "Sorry, I got there first." Love is arguably the top prompter and the top subject of poetry. Thousands of years of people writing poems about poetry has ensured that millions of poems have been written. Shall you compare your sweetheart to a summer's day? No, because Shakespeare has already compared his love to a summer's day and found her "more lovely and more temperate."

So what does this mean? Are you banned from writing love poems just because there are so many of them? No. You just have to work a little harder, and mix things up a little. Try comparing your love to something unexpected: a garden gnome, a kitchen utensil, a hotel maitre d, a popsicle, a limousine. It may seem crazy but, as Seal says, "We're never going to survive unless we get a little crazy." Likewise, our poetry is not going to stand out unless we get a little crazy.

Here's me going off-the-cuff crazy:

"Your eyes are like two Matchbox cars, which you lazily push over my body."

"You have turned my heart into the dome of a cathedral, my lungs into ionic columns."

"You are gentle as a draft, or as Dreft detergent."

"I've been watching you like mall security."

Okay, so the Pulitzer committee isn't exactly kicking down my door, but there is an element of the unique to these comparisons. Another technique for avoiding cliche - repetitions that make our work boring or even leave it smacking of plagiarism - is to go for something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue. Okay, so you don't need something blue but you do need something new.

Try using comparisons to the usual suspects: rain, a flower, a king or queen - even a big old sweet bag of sugar. If you're going to do this, however, you need to twist

• 1
• 2
• 3
• next page >>

Add your voice

Know something about How to write love poems?
We want to hear your view. Write now!