How to Write a Poem About Your Fears

Spill it onto the page, explore, craft and create a word haven for yourself

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Writing poetry does wonderful things for us, as does reading poetry, especially in dark times. Sometimes the very darkest poem can strike a chord of recognition, or a lighter poem with new insights can lift me up. Writing poems for “therapy” is often sneered at, but those of us who write a lot, or even a few, poems know that it is a wonderful way to express how we feel at any given moment, to capture what might be gone in an hour or a day.

This poetry writing exercise can be used however you want — you can simply get out on paper how you feel, using the brain-drop method below, and not go any further. Or you can move into trying for a poem that satisfies you and takes some of your stress and anxiety away. Many of us are feeling it now, so if this helps, great.

Rather than write about more physical fears such as a fear of heights or spiders, the depths of a poem like this come from our psychological fears, the ones we try to avoid. So many of us are feeling distraught and stressed now, because Covid-19 and everything it has brought taps into these deeper fears. They include the following:

· A fear of abandonment