THESE BE THE RULES OF VERSE HOW TO GET STARTED WITH WRITING POETRY

Start Small

Don’t begin by trying to solve the ineffable questions of existence. Just look closely at the world: start by trying to capture it as accurately as possible – what you discover might surprise you.

X=Y

A few years ago, one wag shared his frustration with poetry on Twitter: “We get it poets, things are like other things.” It’s a joke with a point: there’s a reason we use metaphor, simile, allegory. Find common ground between two very different objects, and you reveal each of them in a new light. Hamlet said: “I know a hawk from a handsaw.” Why not write a poem proving that they’re one and the same thing?

Don’t just write, rewrite

Once you have a draft of your poem, put it away in a drawer for 24 hours, then come back and look at it with fresh eyes. Read it aloud, listen to each word. If any of them ring hollow, take the time to figure out why. Don’t be afraid to edit heavily. Sometimes, there might not be a single line from the first draft that makes it through entirely unchanged.

Get a second opinion

The Waste Land wouldn’t have been The Waste Land if it weren’t for Vivienne Eliot and Ezra

Pound: TS Eliot’s manuscripts are covered with their notes. Show your work to a friend – they don’t have to be a writer, just someone you can trust to give you an unvarnished opinion. For a while, I used to read poems to my cat, but now I swap poems with a brutally honest friend every Thursday.

Read everything I recently asked Simon Armitage, the poet laureate, what advice he’d give to new poets. “There’s really only one lesson,” he said. “You can’t be a writer unless you’re a reader. What goes out is a version of what goes in.” So read as much as possible. If you’re not sure where to begin, my poem of the week columns (all online at telegraph.co.uk/ poetry) have recently featured old favourites and the brightest voices of a new generation.

Tristram Fane Saunders’s Woodsong is published by The Poetry Business; New Poetries VIII will be published by Carcanet in January