Writing Love Poetry

Want to write love poems? Unless you are writing to give to a specific person you need to find an edge a new angle. Telling someone you love them they are perfect has been so overdone that it is boring. You need a new angle, so much of love poetry has been overdone it has become hackneyed and clichéd.
Don’t reach for a host of clichés to describe your love, think about going back to the emotions you want to portray that you want to hook your reader into. Does the reader want to hear I love you because you are perfect, I love you because you are beautiful, will they care? The sun and moon are in love with you – really? I will die without you.
Probably not! Most readers know in truth we are imperfect human beings and we love other imperfect human beings and it is sometimes those imperfections that make us love or endear that person to us. We all know that love is not perfect that love is a roller coaster! (cliche) That the first flush of romantic love changes to something different and deeper. That love isn’t roses and champagne it might be be there are tensions, obstacles and its the handling of them that is the fulcrum of a lasting love.
Poetry is not a fairy story its also not about how we feel – its perhaps about how we feel about what we feel.
Poetry should have some authencity and many love poems fail because they are flights of fancy with no basis in fact. If your love poem is going to appeal to the reader as a perfect dream as the fantasy they wish love was then it’s got to work exceptionally well like the best love songs that stay in your head and make you yearn for that undefinable something.

Like any good poem a love poem needs to hook the reader and hold them, excite them. Telling the reader my heart gallops when I see him/her, I would die for her will most likely have your reader thinking ‘whatever’ and moving on, it would not make them give it to everyone to read, they wouldn’t wake in the night thinking of your lines and this dear poet is the essence of a great poet.

All good poetry needs an unfolding story, it might be a tiny moment in time but it should unfold take the reader somewhere. Readers need to connect to the narrator, or the subject of the poem. If someone is being adored I want to know why what is it about that person, if they are beautiful I want to know what that means. The reader needs to care.
Read some great love poetry.