While poetry is undoubtedly about the freedom of expression, and it's important to embrace impulse and inspiration, if you're serious about writing something lasting and unique, you should temper this sense of urgency by asking yourself the following five questions before you start:

1. Has this been done before?

Writing a poem most certainly has been done before, but I’m not referring to that. I’m referring to the idea or conceit of your poem. There is no worse feeling than setting out to write a poem, only to find some weeks, months or years later that someone else got there before you, and, what makes it worse, when they’ve thought about it in more depth than you had already considered. So, I’m not suggesting you have to spend months or years researching to write one poem, however perhaps a few online searches or passing conversations with friends wouldn’t go amiss, and will save you time and misery in the long run. At the same, time we don’t always know what we’re going to write until we’ve written it, so I’d also say you need to temper this need to research with a sense of abandon - ultimately, the more you write the more you will sharpen this sense of balancing research with impetus/impulse. For big projects, though, I’d definitely recommend that you do some research before you set out.

2. What images are fuelling my poem?

Poems are fuelled by imagery. If your poem has no imagery the chances are it will fall flat and lack propulsion and depth of imagination for the reader. At the heart of your poem needs to be at least one central image - the poem may begin or end with this image, or it may well be that the entirety of the poem explores the image, either way, as William Carlos Williams said, ‘no ideas but in things’ - i.e. let the images speak for themselves.

3. What risk am I taking by writing this poem?

We’ve all heard the phrase ‘risk v reward’ and this relates to poetry as much as anything else. What are you risking by writing this poem? Is there something confessional about this poem, is there a boundary that you’re pushing in some way, are you risking something technically or with an image? You’ve got to give the reader a reason to want to read your poem. How many poems have you read and just thought, why did they bother writing this? Be daring. This doesn’t mean you have to play fast and loose with decency and simply use loads of expletives, no, risks in poetry can manifest themselves in subtler ways, maybe with a surprising line break or perhaps you employ a style or voice or perspective you haven’t tried before. Essentially, if the poem is on too safe ground the reader won’t be interested.

4. How is this contemporary?

In what way is your poem something that could only have been written in the present moment? What is is about your poem that means it couldn’t have been written 10 days ago, 10 months, 10 years, 100 years ago? There should always be something of the contemporary in your poem. Again, this does not have to mean you need to refer to AI or social media but maybe there could be some subtle sign of our current time in your poem. If poetry is to live, it should keep in step with the world as it changes; poetry should speak to and speak from the present.

5. Why am I writing this?

When the reader encounters your poem, they should have a sense of this being a poem that you simply had to write, that you had an urgent need to write this (even if it’s a poem you’ve been thinking about writing for a long time), and that it only could have been written by you.