
Photo by Mike Tinnion on Unsplash Modified by me Using Photoshop
Hi fellow poets of The Ink Well community. This is @raj808 here to provide a spark of inspiration, lighting the candle of creativity to illuminate our little community through the power of poetry.
As the title implies
this is going to be
a free verse universal
expressive flight,
like a seagull
winging it's way
over estuary strands
of imagination.
Weave webs of imagery
and gossamer strands,
as you soar free
as a bird over lands
letting the pen
take over your hands.
© Rowan Joyce, all rights reserved.
After last week's exercise in form, which produced some exceptional ballads, I wanted to set everyone free with a challenge to write around the theme of freedom.
This challenge is as open ended as I could make it while still providing a prompt.
Free verse by its very definition is an act of freedom, an unleashing of the creative mind unfettered by the strict conventions of form.
My only piece of advice is that you consider that modern free verse poetry does have its own set of techniques that show that it is a poem and not just a paragraph of prose split up into verses.
Modern free verse poetry often replaces end of line rhymes with
internal rhymes which happen at different positions within a single line, or even between lines but don't stick to traditional convention of rhyming at the end of the line. For example, look at the words highlighted in bold from a section of my opening poem for this post:
As the title implies
this is going to be
a free verse universal
expressive flight
This is not to say you can't use end of line rhymes if you wish. Remember you're free to weave webs of imagery and gossamer strands, as you soar free as a bird over lands letting the pen take over your hands.
Another widely used technique in free verse is that of alliteration, which when used subtly, can create rhythm and depth of feeling.
Definition of alliteration: the occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words.
Weave webs of imagery
and gossamer strands,
The above example shows classic alliteration in the repeated W consonant in weave webs and an example of sibilance between the S sounds in gossamer strands.
Definition: Sibilance is a more specific type of alliteration that relies on the repetition of soft consonant sounds in words to create a wooshing or hissing sound.
Source
These are just a few techniques that you could experiment with but above all with this challenge I want to inspire freedom; both as a theme, and in how you express yourself as a poet.
This could even extend to making a voice or video recording as I have experimented with myself in the past. Here is an example of a free verse poem that I wrote earlier this year, set to music and edited into a short film.

But don't feel the need to push yourself to making a video lol. I only show this as an example of the level of freedom of expression I'd love to see from all the poets at The Ink Well.
Literally... feel free in writing your free verse poem.
This challenge will run for seven days until next Thursday when I shall provide another poetic prompt and challenge.
I hope you guys have fun writing around the theme of 'freedom' and I look forward to reading all of your poems.
Thanks for reading.
If you would like to delegate to @theinkwell and help support creative writing on steem you can do so by clicking on any of the following links for the amount you would like to delegate:
We also now have a curation trail set up so if you are a SteemAuto user, @theinkwell is now available as a curation trail to follow.
We would like to say a special thank you to those kind souls who have already delegated to help support The Ink Well and creative writing on steem.
@riverflows 500 Steem power delegation, thank you.
@raj808 500 steem power delegation.
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