Don Behrend began writing poems to amuse his children, but shifted to an adult (sometimes strictly adult) readership. His debut poetry collection, You’re the Froth on My Soy Cappuccino, was published in February 2019. His second book, Copernicus! What Have You Done? will be out in September 2019.
You're the Froth on My Soy Cappuccino
Look on the bright side.
Life is full of funny, ironic or quirky situations. It’s also full of injustice, inhumanity and suffering. Great poetry can and should be written about the dark side, but entertainment is still a worthy aim - perhaps needed even more in serious times. I try to keep an ongoing lookout for amusing events, associations or even odd words that may spark an idea for a poem. Admittedly, once I start writing, the poem often seems to veer off in a direction of its own and end up as something rather different (and generally better) than what I had in mind. But the crucial step is always – grab an idea and get started!
Read or listen to entertaining poets of the past.
We may not hope to match the work of the Greats, but artists in every field are inspired by the achievements of their predecessors. To develop the craft of writing light verse, look for poets you enjoy, then read, read, read. Unfortunately, this style of poetry is not much in vogue at the moment (a gap waiting to be filled, I believe), so you may have to go back a few years. John Betjeman was enormously and deservedly popular in the mid-1900s and would probably be so again if writing today. In the previous century, Lewis Carroll, author of the Alice books, included clever little poems in those books, and also wrote a marvellous longer poem, The Hunting of the Snark. Closer to our time, some of the best light verse has been written as lyrics for musicals or as musical performance pieces. In the latter field, Tom Lehrer and the duo Michael Flanders and Donald Swann come to mind.
Use regular metre and rhyme.
Formalism in the sense of strict metre and rhyme is rather out of fashion these days, but I’m convinced it’s still the best style for verse written to entertain. Bouncy rhythm and jaunty rhymes give a sort of musicality and a cheerful voice to poetry. Furthermore, they make good verses much easier to memorize – in the best cases, almost impossible not to memorize – and this is surely the ambition of every poet.
Review, revise, refine.
When you think a poem is finished, it’s probably not - but you won’t be able to see that straight away. Put the poem aside for a few weeks, and when you read it again it will be with eyes more like those of a new reader. You may even decide that the whole thing is better suited for the waste-paper basket than for the printers! Fortunately, the more common scenario is to see weaknesses that can be corrected by anything from insertion of a comma to a partial re-write. The process of revision and refinement can be repeated till you run out of patience. Leonardo da Vinci is supposed to have said: “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” Perfection may be out of reach for most of us, but the best poems in this genre are like polished jewels.
Enjoy yourself.
One advantage of writing short, light–hearted poems is that it can be done in the gaps between the everyday activities of life. You can work on a poem while you’re going for a walk or brushing your teeth. But the greatest benefit is that it’s just great fun. I often find myself chuckling as I write. And, of course, if a poem was fun to write, there’s a good chance it will be fun to read.