Writing Monsoon Poems Without Drowning in the Cliche

Every June the contest pile floods with rain poems, and ninety percent of them say the same thing. A judge on why the monsoon is the hardest season to write about, the four images that are always in the pile, and the sideways approach that actually lands.

Every June the contest pile floods. Not with entries, with the same poem. Rain on a window, rain on a roof, the smell of wet earth, the first drops on a dry road. The monsoon is the hardest season to write about, not because there is nothing to say, but because everything has already been said.

I have read eleven monsoon seasons of contest entries, and the rain poem is the single most common submission and the single most common failure. The problem is not the rain. The problem is that the poet wrote about the rain instead of what the rain was doing.

The four images that are always in the pile

Every June, four images show up in the rain poems, and they show up so often that they have become the poem's wallpaper.

The window. Rain on a window, the drops racing down, the world blurred. It is the single most common image in the pile, and it is almost always the poet watching the rain instead of being in it.

The smell. Petrichor, wet earth, the smell of rain. It is real and it is specific, and it has been used so many times that it has stopped meaning anything. A poem that opens with the smell of rain is a poem that has already been written.

The first drops. The anticipation, the waiting, the first drops on a dry road. It is the monsoon's most cinematic moment, which is exactly why it is the most common.

The umbrella. The umbrella held, the umbrella shared, the umbrella left behind. It is the prop of the monsoon poem, and it is almost always a symbol that was chosen instead of a thing that was seen.

The sideways approach

The monsoon poem that wins is not the poem about the rain. It is the poem about what the rain interrupts, or reveals, or makes possible.

The monsoon poem that wins is the poem about the landlord who has not fixed the leak in three years, and the rain is the thing that makes the leak visible. Or the poem about the schoolboy who loves the rain because it is the only thing that closes the gap between his house and the school. Or the poem about the couple who argue in the rain because the rain is the only thing that makes the argument feel honest.

The rain is the setting, not the subject. The subject is the thing the rain makes possible, and the thing the rain makes possible is almost never the rain.

A worked example

Bad: 'The rain fell on the window and I thought of you.' The rain is the poem; the 'you' is the afterthought.

Better: 'The leak in the ceiling had been there for three years, and the rain was the only thing that made it show.' The rain is the occasion; the leak is the subject. The poem is about the landlord and the years and the thing that only the rain can make you see.

Where it goes wrong

The trap is the poem that is about the rain's beauty. The monsoon is beautiful, and the poem that says so is saying the one thing everyone already knows. The poem that wins is the one that uses the rain to say something that could only be said in the rain.

If you want a prompt that uses the season as a frame instead of a subject, the prompts library has a seasonal set, and the contest window is open when the draft is ready. The monsoon is not the subject. It is the light that lets you see the subject.

Keep reading

For the craft side, the rain poems collection covers the deeper method. The prompts library is the page to read next, and the imagery module is where the work goes when it is done.

By Writory Editorial, for Writory.

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