Writing Poetry, Like All Creative Writing, Can Release and Reduce Stress
If you are dealing with anxiety – chronically draining or acutely painful – put your feelings into words. Speaking or writing about struggle gives you a bit of an edge on that struggle.
Poetic expression is one means of releasing the stresses that complicate our lives. Through poetic exploration, we may come to discover ourselves in new ways and find new ways of managing our stresses. AI poem generators can help us recover from some of the anxieties that can unbalance our lives.
Where do I start?
Writing poetry begins with our intentions to use poetic expression to address something important in our lives. Using input that we provide, AI can prompt us by suggesting variations of the combinations of words and structures frequently found in poems. AI cannot write our poems for us, but AI can nudge us to find our own poetic language.
We express our intentions with the questions that we ask. Responses to our questions ask us if our statements reflect what we truly mean to say. Asking AI to point us to ways of expressing our intentions is similar to asking anyone to try and understand us. Elena Shalevska, scholar on the poetic use of AI, makes the statement “In the classroom, AI becomes a valuable tool, allowing students to explore various poetic forms and styles, while offering instant feedback to enhance their learning and even improve their poetry-writing skills.”
How can ai help me find my poetic voice?
Poetic exploration with AI begins with a prompt. The prompt we offer to AI focuses the search for words, phrases, and structure spread across a virtually unfathomable expanse of poetic expressions. AI responds with examples that ask us, “Is this something like what you might be feeling?” AI is our navigator. But we are never sitting alone in the back seat of a car on autopilot.
The navigator role is what poets of antiquity would call their muse, an external voice nudging their creativity to the surface. There are over a dozen poetic AI muses currently milling about 3. As with any muse, we will accept them only if they speak to us in a way that feels appropriately real. When we meet a possible muse and stare into its invisibly opaque eyes, we can choose to start a conversation.
How do we get an AI muse to respond?
Let me introduce you to a potential muse. This muse is formally known as AI Poem Generator, who we will call PoGe. Think of it sort of like Dobby the house elf. We might ask PoGe if she can understand what we are feeling as we struggle with our anxiety. We might ask PoGe if she can help us write a poem to our anxiety hoping that our anxiety itself might understand the hurt it causes. PoGe can do no more than ask if she understands by posing different possible interpretations. She will respond differently each time we ask and with each different way of asking.
Here is how.
- Call out your anxiety. Imagine your anxiety was sitting across the table and that your anxiety can only understand what is said in a poem.
- Open the PoGe web site.
- On the very top of the page check that TYPE of poem is “freeform”.
- Tell AI to write a poem in response to this sentence: “Create an original poem about my anxiety.”
- Paste your poem request into the INSTRUCTIONS box.
- Press GENERATE and wait a few seconds.
- An AI poem will appear as OUTPUT.
- If parts of the AI spark something in you, copy them for inspiration. AI takes our language and rearranges the words. We take back our language and assemble it.
Each time you press GENERATE, a new unique AI poem will appear. If you don’t feel anything from the responses, then modify the instructions. Try something like “Create an original poem telling my anxiety to float away” or “Create an original poem begging my anxiety to go to sleep.” You get the idea. To tweak the output, add additional instructions like “Use only familiar words” or “Make the poem angry.”
If PoGe doesn’t give you something that speaks to you, then modify the request. Perhaps ask PoGe to “Create an original poem telling my anxiety to float away.” You can try again with something like “Create an original poem begging my anxiety to go to sleep.” You get the idea. To tweak PoGe’s response, we can modify our request. We can add things like “Use only familiar words. Make the poem angry.” We harvest only what we want.
With our harvest of heartfelt bits of human language, we then become the poets. We select, trim, or expand and recombine language and then we cannot help but create something of our own. Enjoy the process. Play with the language. Some poems brief, some poems go on and on. You decide when you are through writing. And if the muse moves you, you might even write several poems.
What do we do with our poems?
If you are willing to share your poem, please send it to BlueSkiesPoems@mail.com. You can provide us with your name if you like. We will post as many examples of brief anxiety poetry as we possibly can.
Note: The internet never forgets, so please don’t enter proper names into your prompt.