Writing Reader Friendly Poems Plus Writing Exercises

This compact guide shares how to master the art of “reader-friendly poetry”-- writing that reaches beyond confession, shrugs off literary fashion, and bypasses the esoteric and avant-garde, to put the reader first. With more than 50 rules of thumb, writers learn to select, expand, rearrange, and edit raw inspiration into poems that are clear and engaging, that touch emotions, mind, and senses. Numerous writing exercises provide lots of practice in these techniques. The book also includes pointers on finding inspiration, as well as on submitting work for publication. The advice has been honed through Susan Ioannou’s many years as a widely published Canadian poet, creative writing teacher, and literary editor.

The Dance Between is a suite of spare and striking poems about women, in various stages of life’s rhythms. Susan Ioannou’s epigram speaks of the moment between “what you once were, / and what you are now becoming” as being that dance. The poems span women’s lives, past and present, following common threads that are both personal and universal. The three sections group poems according to women in history and in the poets’ personal history. In the first section, “Out Front”, Ioannou sketches many profiles of women artists who have influenced the narrator. Part 2, “The Fallen”, follows tragic narratives of women’s loss and loneliness. The third part, “The Stars Wait”, comprises poems about women’s rites of passage, epiphanies, and coming of age. Many poems are collages of female figures, mosaics of memories, word portraits, and personal sketches. Poetic portraits range from landlord to sculptor, Latin dancer to war bride, babies to grandmas. Often sculpture is a metaphor—for women’s lives and bodies, sculpted by history, by others, by time and culture. “An acre of earth / or inside our heads / where do we wander, describe what is real?” There are portraits of domestic artistry, communing with nature, and making something out of nothing. These poems reflect on how some things change and some are timeless in the lives of women. There is simplicity of image and setting; poems are spare and paint pictures with brushstrokes. “We look through illusion, / permit time’s brush its stroke.” Often poems are seen through the artists’ perspective, and are shot through with light—light within people and in the memorable glints of brightness of place. “Between our words, warmth / hovers thick with light.” There are tragic stories of survivors and war brides, of prejudice and powerful suppressive practices, with hints of tragedy and loss, yet balanced with tragedy and loss are poems of new beginnings: fledgling ballerinas and a golf lesson, first writing workshops and first connections, as well as resilience. Despite dark images, the narrator “uncurls poems towards the light.” In the final section, women move towards empowerment and self-realization. In the end, each woman creates “a revised ending for herself.” Ioannou moves from specific to the general, from personal to the universal, from loss to learning. Like the mentioned cross-stitch samplers and quilts of the pioneer days, these poems weave images and samples of women in Canadian life. “Loneliness, she knows / can thicken drop by drop, / and choke the spirit down.” Domestic scenes are often warm, in contrast to nature scenes often fierce, struggling “to wed you with old earth.” Often there is the undertone of longing and yearning, yet resilience and light shine through overall. The poet explores opposites, and not just the tension between them, but, as the title suggests, the lively dance between, “never to be known, and so, / unable to be forgotten. -- Review by Kate Marshall Flaherty, published in Verse Afire, January 2021

As a writer, if you thrive on encouragement, this book is for you. From three decades of editing, teaching, and writing fiction and poetry, Ioannou knows well the thorns and honey of the literary life: "When we write, we are up against the wall. Who am I? What do I feel? What do I think? Writing forces us to be alone with our thoughts, to work through the wrinkles of our own living." At the same time, when the lines are flowing, there is no greater high -- what keeps a writer addicted. These pages bring ample light and balm, support and inspiration. What's more, there's laughter too, as fable and satire poke gentle fun at foibles and absurdities on the literary scene, and remind all writers of the importance of holding true.

Written in a rich variety of voices, the colourful narratives aim to entertain. They begin with a little girl's weekend in an artist's home, then shiver from a "Giant-Lady's" wintry farm, to summer dining in a mansion and a boy's exotic lunches on a neighbour's porch. A university student delights in her debonair "older man", a corporate executive rediscovers romance, an immigrant's daughter searches for a lost homeland, and women challenged by advancing years cope each in her unique way. Realistic, bizarre, funny, or touching, the stories in Nine to Ninety promise a potpourri of diverting reading.

A Real Farm Girl tells the story of a young city girl's adventures while visiting her grandmother's farm in the 1940s. Mary wants to prove that she can handle farm chores. She helps her Uncle Louis collect eggs from the chicken coop, milk the cows, and feed the pigs. The chores are not as easy as she thought. She gets pecked by the chickens, is chased by a bull, and has a manure mishap. But she doesn't give up, determined to become a real farm girl. This is a book for both young and old to enjoy and also learn about Canada's rural past.

Introduces different kinds of poems, including headline, letter, recipe, list, and monologue, and provides exercises in writing poems based on both memory and imagination.

"Refugee is a powerful word. One that conjures opposing emotions. For some it provokes feelings of fear and hate, for others the need for compassion, understanding and empathy. In his celebrated poem, Refugees, Brian Bilston tells both sides of the story by cleverly crafting a verse that can be read backwards and forwards to convey the opposing views."--Provided by publisher