FOR ANYONE WHO WANTS TO WRITE A POEM BUT DOESN’T KNOW HOW.

A POEM DOESN’T HAVE TO BEGIN AS A POEM.

Start with a thought, feeling, memory, or experience and develop it line by line into a finished poem in one hour.

01

BEGIN WITH THE STUFF OF LIFE

Start with a thought, feeling, memory, experience, or something you noticed.

02

INVESTIGATE

Ask a question, write the answer as the next line, and keep following what comes to mind.

03

FINISH BY RETURNING

Choose something from your opening lines and bring it back at the end, changed by everything the poem has moved through.

WRITE A POEM IN ONE HOUR — $37

YOU’VE PROBABLY BEEN GIVEN REASONABLE ADVICE.

Read more poetry. Write from the heart. Just start writing.

So you read poems and try to figure out what makes them work. You write down the thoughts and feelings you want to express. You try breaking sentences into lines, reaching for metaphor or rhyme, or making the language sound more “poetic.”

And still, what comes out can feel more like a journal entry, a confession, or a piece of prose than a poem.

Or you get a few lines down and stop because you don’t know what comes next. You wonder where the line breaks should go, whether the language sounds childish or corny, or how you’re supposed to know when the poem is finished.

So you start assuming you need to read more poetry, wait for inspiration, find something more important to write about, or maybe just have more natural talent for it.

But “read poetry,” “write from the heart,” and “just start writing” were never unreasonable advice.

They simply don’t answer the question you were trying to solve:

Once you have something to say, how do you actually develop it into a poem?

WHAT’S MISSING IS A WAY TO DEVELOP THE POEM.

You can have the memory, the feeling, the experience, even the first few lines, and still get stuck because none of those tells you what to write next.

What you need at that point is a process for carrying one line into another, following what appears, and eventually bringing the poem to an ending.

Then you do not have to invent the whole poem at once. You only have to know what to do with the line you have.

YOU SIT DOWN WITH A MEMORY, FEELING, OR EXPERIENCE AND END UP WONDERING WHETHER WHAT YOU WROTE IS EVEN A POEM.

It sounds like prose or journaling, so you start questioning the language, the line breaks, whether it sounds corny, what should come next, and how you are supposed to know when it is finished.

Sometimes the fragment gets abandoned. Sometimes the uncertainty keeps you from beginning at all.

Then another feeling, memory, or experience comes along, and you meet the same problem again.

WRITE A POEM IN ONE HOUR — $37

FIRST

BEGIN WITH SOMETHING FROM YOUR LIFE.

A memory. A feeling. Something that happened yesterday. Something you noticed. Something you keep thinking about.

It does not have to be important or dramatic. In the workshop, I begin with an ordinary trip to the grocery store and the pharmacy.

Choose one and complete a simple sentence about it. That becomes your first line. It does not need to sound poetic, and you do not need to know what the poem means yet.

THEN

INVESTIGATE WHAT YOU JUST WROTE.

Ask one question of that first line:

What do I see?
What happened?
What detail do I notice?
What does this make me think of?

Write the answer as your next line.

Then choose another question and do the same thing again. Each answer gives you another line and another place to continue from. In the workshop, noticing ice cream sandwiches at the pharmacy leads to a childhood friend I had not thought about in years.

Keep following what appears until you have roughly 8–20 lines.

You do not need to plan the destination, force a metaphor, or make line-break decisions while you are composing.

FINALLY

RETURN TO WHERE YOU BEGAN.

Go back to your opening lines and choose one thing from them: a word, image, person, object, feeling, action, or physical detail.

Bring it back at the end and ask:

What can I say about this now?

Because the poem has moved since you first wrote that detail, you now have something different to say about it. In the workshop, the pharmacy returns after the poem has moved through ice cream sandwiches, a childhood friend, summer, baseball, and movies:

“I didn’t realize I’d see my childhood.”

At that point, you have developed the starting material through roughly 8–20 lines, returned to something from the opening, and given the poem an ending.

You do not have to see the finished poem before you begin. You only have to know what to do with the line in front of you.

I DIDN’T START WITH A METHOD FOR WRITING POETRY.

I started writing poems at sixteen after encountering Walt Whitman. I had never been taught creative writing, had no framework for what I was doing, and mostly learned by reading poets I admired and trying to imitate them.

For years, writing poetry meant figuring out what worked as I went.

Then, around twenty-four, just before beginning my MFA, I was reading Sir Thomas Wyatt when it suddenly hit me: I had seen this movement before.

Across different periods of poetry, and eventually in my own writing, I kept seeing versions of the same underlying logic. A poem could begin with a thought or concrete detail, develop through association, make a turn, and arrive somewhere different by the end.

It was not a rule every poem followed. It was a recurring structure.

A poem could begin with something concrete, follow what that material opened into, move through association and discovery, and eventually return to something from the beginning changed by everything that had happened since.

After that, I kept seeing versions of the same movement as I wrote, published, studied, and taught poetry. My MFA in Writing and PhD in English gave me years to study the pattern more closely, but teaching it mattered just as much. I used versions of this process in creative writing and poetry courses.

Write a Poem in One Hour takes that recurring movement and strips it down to the simplest sequence I know how to teach: begin, investigate, follow, return.

So you do not have to spend years trying to reverse-engineer how poems develop from the poems you read. You can start with something from your own life and follow a process for developing it from the first line to the last.

KNOWING HOW POETRY WORKS IS DIFFERENT FROM KNOWING WHAT TO WRITE NEXT.

Learning metaphor, imagery, rhyme, and line breaks can help you understand what poems are doing. But while you are actually writing, the useful question is much more immediate: what do I do with this line?

In this process, you ask something of the line you just wrote and use the answer as the next line. Craft decisions such as line breaks can wait until revision.

You keep following what each line opens into until you have enough material, then return to something from the beginning to give the poem an ending.

So while you are writing, you always have a next move.

And the next time a memory, feeling, experience, or stray observation gives you something you want to write about, you don’t have to start over wondering how to make it into a poem. You have a way to begin, develop what appears, and carry it to an ending.

THINK BOB ROSS, BUT FOR POETRY.

Think Bob Ross and his happy little clouds. The real genius of those shows was that you weren’t supposed to just sit there and watch him paint. You could paint along with him.

By the end of the episode, Bob had a finished painting. And if you followed along, you had one too.

That is basically how I built this workshop.

I don’t explain the method and then send you away to try it by yourself. I write a poem alongside you, beginning with an ordinary experience I had a few days earlier: going to the grocery store and finding my way to the pharmacy.

That becomes my first line.

Then I follow the same questions you’re following. The pharmacy leads me to ice cream sandwiches. The ice cream sandwiches lead me to Johnny, my childhood best friend. Johnny leads me into summer, baseball, the trampoline, and movies. None of that was planned in advance.

The finished poem written during the workshop, titled 'in brotherhood'.

The poem written during the workshop.

By the time we reach revision, I have a finished poem on my screen, and you have been following the same process on yours.

WRITE A POEM IN ONE HOUR — $37

HOW MANY THINGS HAVE YOU WANTED TO TURN INTO A POEM THAT NEVER BECAME ONE?

A memory. A person. Something that happened yesterday. A feeling you wanted to put into words.

When the same thing keeps happening, those poems simply never get written.

For $37 and about one hour, you are buying a process for carrying one of them all the way from the first line to the last.

ARRIVE WITH SOMETHING YOU WANT TO EXPRESS. LEAVE ABOUT AN HOUR LATER WITH A FINISHED POEM AND A PROCESS YOU CAN USE AGAIN.

Write a Poem in One Hour is a self-paced recorded workshop you can start immediately after purchase.

You’ll write your poem during the workshop, following along as I demonstrate the same process on screen.

The accompanying worksheet takes you through the process in order: choose your starting material and write the first line, use the questions to develop it into roughly 8–20 lines, then return to something from the opening to create an ending.

The workshop finishes with a short revision pass for reading aloud, awkward language, line breaks, and the title.

Write a Poem in One Hour

Recorded workshop + worksheet
About 60 minutes
Immediate access
Lifetime access

$37

GET INSTANT ACCESS — $37

This workshop makes one specific promise: bring a thought, feeling, memory, experience, or ordinary detail, follow the writing process, and finish a poem in about an hour.

You do have to write along and follow the steps, and I cannot promise that the poem you produce will be extraordinary, publishable, or something you never want to revise.

The promise is simply that you will have a process for carrying something from your life all the way from the first line to a finished poem.

This workshop is a good fit if:

You have something you want to express, but you don’t know how to turn it into a poem. That could be a feeling, memory, experience, thought, question, or ordinary moment.

You can begin writing, but you don’t know how to develop or finish what you started. Maybe it sounds like prose or journaling, or becomes another fragment you abandon.

You’re willing to write along with the workshop. The process only works if you actually put words on the page and follow the questions from the first line through the ending.

THIS PROBABLY ISN’T FOR YOU IF:

You’re looking for a comprehensive course on poetic forms, meter, metaphor, or the history of poetry. That isn’t what I teach here.

You want manuscript-level critique or individual feedback. This is a recorded workshop built to help you write the poem, not evaluate a body of work.

Or what you primarily want is publication strategy. The workshop doesn’t cover where to submit poems, how to prepare submissions, or how to get published.

7-DAY COMPLETION GUARANTEE

Complete Write a Poem in One Hour and the guided writing exercise within seven days of purchase.

Follow the process from your first line through the final return. If you do that and do not end with a complete poem, request a refund within those seven days and I’ll refund your purchase.

The guarantee is tied to the promise of the workshop: completing a poem. It is not a guarantee that the poem will be publishable, accepted for publication, or something you never choose to revise.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

What if I don’t know what to write about?

You don’t need to arrive with a fully formed idea for a poem. Start with a feeling, memory, experience, question, person, or even an ordinary moment from your life. The process is designed to help you investigate that starting point and discover where it leads.

What if everything I write sounds like prose or journaling?

That is one of the central problems the workshop addresses. You start with the material you already have, then use the questions in the process to develop it line by line and bring it to an ending.

Do I need something important or traumatic to write about?

No. An ordinary experience is enough. You can begin with something you noticed yesterday. The process works by investigating what is already there rather than requiring you to begin with a dramatic subject.

Do poems have to rhyme?

No. You can write the poem in free verse. You do not need to understand rhyme, meter, poetic forms, or line breaks before you begin. You can make those decisions later. You do not need them in order to get the first draft written.

How do I know when the poem is finished?

The method gives you a specific way to finish. After developing the poem, you return to something from the opening, such as a word, image, person, object, feeling, action, or physical detail, and bring it back at the end.

What if I’ve never written a poem before?

That’s fine. You do not need previous experience to follow the process. You begin with something from your own life, complete a simple first line, and follow the questions from there. The steps are simple enough to follow while you are actually writing the poem.

How long is the workshop?

About one hour. You write along with the workshop, so the time spent watching is also the time spent applying the process. The goal is to finish the workshop with one complete poem and a process you can use again.

Is it live or recorded?

It’s a self-paced recorded workshop. You get immediate access after purchase and lifetime access, so you can begin right away and return to the process whenever you want to write another poem.

STILL READING?

Then you already know this is for you.

If you have something you want to turn into a poem and you’re ready to follow the process from the first line to the last, take the next step.

Write a Poem in One Hour

$37 · Immediate access · Lifetime access · 7-day completion guarantee

Recorded one-hour workshop + worksheet
Instant access after purchase
Lifetime access
7-day completion guarantee
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