Please sponsor my 5k swim coming up in April and help support Marie Curie Cancer Care, an organisation which provides home nursing care to people with terminal illnesses.

Here are four ways to read poetry that will help to improve (or at least change) your own poetic practice:

1. When a journal rejects you, get a copy of the issue for which you submitted (as near as you can tell). As you read the poems, think about what they do that the poems you sent in don’t. Then, ask yourself if you want your poems to do those things. If you do, figure out how the poems do those things and how you can make your own do the same. If you don’t, bury the journal and don’t submit again unless there’s a change in editorial staff. (There is, of course, also the possibility that you won’t find that the selected poems do anything yours don’t, in which case you should probably make sure that your future poems do something none of those poems published do.)
2. If you loathe a poet, read more of them, not because you’ll change your mind (though you may) but because any gem you find in a hated poet—a phrase, a technique, a theme—must be very strong indeed for you to respond positively to it. (By contrast, mediocre lines may seem to shine if they are written by a poet you already appreciate.) Steal whatever shimmers; if it turns out to be pyrite rather than gold, you can always discard it later (unless, like me, you like the way pyrite looks).
3. Analyze and memorize the poets you do like. Figure out what about their work appeals to you, and use that in your own work. Commit their works to memory so you can quote them, recite them before your own readings, and internalize their rhythms (or shapes if they’re visual).
4. Read randomly. Go to the poetry section of an independent bookstore or of your local library and pick up someone you’ve never read before. This opens you up to synchronicity and the discovery of a new loved or hated poet. 

How do you read as a poet?

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