Most of us probably encountered poetry even before we began school. Picture books are often based around poems, and some of the best loved Children’s authors write with rhyme and rhythm. Many of us were probably asked–somewhere between forced and strongly encouraged–to write a poem during our first few years of schooling.

A few of us have chosen to keep doing that even once school is over. Every poet has their own reasons and their own process.

For me, most poems form around a kernel of an image. The way a man shaking his black umbrella free of rain looks like he’s fighting a crow. The steady rhythm of a train on its tracks. The acrid smell of burnt toast when the trees outside are blooming.

Once that kernel is there, I gather other imagery, sometimes trying to incorporate all of the senses and sometimes focusing on none of them. I write a tiny story, and then begin chopping, re-ordering, and replacing the words.

At some point, I may have enough that I marshal the words into a traditional form or at least a traditional meter. And then I put the poem away for a while, to let the batter I’ve created rise like bread on its own.

When it’s done, whether it’s flat because there was no leavening or overflown its small container and demanded more stanzas, I shape it again and then bake it, making the smallest of changes: a comma here, a line break there.

And then it’s a poem. But, for me, part of the magic is that it was always a poem. I am simply getting it ready for others to read, perhaps picking places that will eventually publish or reject it.