Choosing a Subject
How do you pick a subject for your poem? Some subjects seem to pick us. Sometimes we are so struck by the sadness or the delightfulness of a scene or an event that we want to write about it. Failing that, however, there are several main areas we can explore to come up with a theme.

Place:
Think of somewhere you have been that has had an effect on you. It might be an abandoned warehouse, or a room in the home in which you grew up, or a bridge over a river, or a city just before dawn. W.B. Yeats’s poem “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” is an example of how a place can take on a character of its own through your poetry. It begins:  

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.  

A past experience:
Any kind of experience can be used. For example sitting an exam, going for a walk, losing your phone, running for a train, being told that someone you know has died. John Milton’s long poem “Lycidas” was written on the occasion of the poet, Edward King’s, death. It begins:  

Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forc'd fingers rude
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear
Compels me to disturb your season due;
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.  

A particular person:
This could be someone related to you, or a complete stranger you pass in the street. It might be someone famous, or a historical figure, or a traffic cop, a friend, or an enemy. A lot of poems that are directed at a specific person, for example love poems, can say a lot about the person writing them. John Donne’s love poem “Twickenham Gardens” has that quality, where the poet expresses, more than anything else, self-reproach. It begins:  

BLASTED with sighs, and surrounded with tears,
Hither I come to seek the spring,
And at mine eyes, and at mine ears,
Receive such balms as else cure every thing.
But O! self-traitor, I do bring
The spider Love, which transubstantiates all,
And can convert manna to gall ;
And that this place may thoroughly be thought
True paradise, I have the serpent brought.  

An object:
This might be anything as varied as a cup of coffee or a child’s toy. It could be a car, the sun, a desk, a melon or a house porch. The poem, “The Day My Car Died,” whose subject is what it sounds like, begins:  

A point of gunmetal gray
tarnished by the workhorse years
a flange, a nipple, a block
enclose the miracle of movement
under the black hood.  
Ratchet, piston, valve, plug
plot out their kinetic wonder
beating out microscopic failure
in a matter of time
if only time were good.  

An emotion:
Often the reason someone might want to write a poem in the first place is because of an emotion, whether it be hate or love, embarrassment or contentment, excitement or sadness. Allen Ginsberg’s classic poem, “Howl” is a long rant full of anger, but is nevertheless very effective poetically. Here’s a short section from the beginning:  

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz…  

An event:
You could write about a wedding of someone you know, a funeral you attended, a football game in which your team won or an election that had a surprise outcome. Here’s a snippet from a sonnet that is simply called “The Wedding.”  

The man stood, stolidly to attention
up front. There were, in the church’s narthex,
presentiments of crying or car wrecks
to account for the bride’s absence. Tension
stalked down the aisles like a collection plate.
Then murmurs, crushed silk, sighs, and they began.
The organ played the march, she almost ran,
and white married gray at long last, though late.  

A landscape or seascape scene:
This topic gives you a lot of scope to describe different types of trees, grass swaying in the wind, waves lapping on the shore, the horizon melting into the land, an angry sky, misty mountains and hills. The free-verse poem “Cairngarroch Beach,” describes the shoreline near a fishing village on the west coast of Scotland.

The wheedling of the great sea
bent down upon the nose of the shore,
clogged with rotting kelp and the clutter
of a thousand frantic visitors,
and spent the balance of days
breaking the rocks all to sand.
When I took the swoop of the road
down to the each, seagulls
were fighting over garbage
or a spill of shellfish on the pier,
and when I looked out under my hand
the breakers were rolling in to the birthplace.

A time of year:
Some of the most famous poems have been about endless summers, or harsh and brutal winters. But you could also write about someone’s birthday – and give the poem to them as a birthday gift, or about Christmas, Hanukkah or New Year’s Day. Thomas Hardy’s “The Darkling Thrush” commemorated the turn of the century over a hundred years ago. Here is stanza two, by way of example:  

The land's sharp features seemed to be      
     The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,      
     The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth      
     Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth      
     Seemed fervourless as I.  

A time of day:
This subject can include getting up in the morning full of life and energy, going to bed at night exhausted (or vice versa if you’re on night shift!); the regularity of the working day or the peace of leisure time; watching a glorious sunrise or sunset. Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing” celebrates work at various times of day. Here are a few lines from the poem: 

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands…  

Weather:
Deafening thunderstorms, sinister fog, a day under the scorching sun, a day of miserable drizzle, an overcast or cloudy day, heavy snow, pelting hail, lashing rain and wind: any one of these could play a part in your poem. T.S. Eliot has a much quoted image of fog as a dog from “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock”:

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes             
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,             
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,             
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,             
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, And seeing that it was a soft October night,             
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.  

An animal:
This can be a domestic animal like a dog or cat, or something exotic like a gorilla or a snake. I often find it useful to do some background research on a particular animal to give me some material to work with. “Baby Tortoise,” by D.H. Lawrence is a good example of an animal poem. It begins:

You know what it is to be born alone,
Baby tortoise!
The first day to heave your feet little by little from the shell,
Not yet awake,
And remain lapsed on earth,
Not quite alive.
A tiny, fragile, half-animate bean.