Making Words Sing

 Introducing Making Words Sing

Every poet begins somewhere — with a spark, a question, a feeling, a line that won’t leave them alone. But turning that spark into something that resonates on the page takes more than inspiration. It takes attention, technique, curiosity, and a willingness to listen to the music inside language.

Making Words Sing: Exploring the Sounds, Silences and Sensations of Poetry grew out of decades of teaching, writing, reading, and watching poets discover their own voices. It’s a book for anyone who wants to deepen their craft — whether you’re just beginning or you’ve been shaping poems for years.Poetry is an art form as broad and varied as painting or music.

What moves one reader may leave another untouched, but there are tools that help us create work that lingers: rhythm, imagery, metaphor, structure, sound. In this book, I explore those tools one by one — not as rules, but as possibilities. Ways of thinking. Ways of hearing. Ways of sharpening the emotional and sensory impact of your writing.You’ll find examples, exercises, reflections, and practical guidance designed to help you think like a poet. To notice the weight of a verb. The colour inside an image. The silence between two lines. The pulse of a stanza. The way a poem can shift a reader’s breath.

My hope is simple: that this book helps you unlock something — a new technique, a new confidence, a new way of seeing. That it encourages you to experiment, to play, to trust your instincts, and to let your words sing in your own unmistakable voice.