How to Create the Perfect Persona for Your Poem

The persona, the key character in a poem, is a make-or-break point in every piece of poetry. The same is the case in all other forms of literature – the characters you use must be exceptional. If you have hopes of winning poetry competitions, you must create a persona that is relatable or brings out the theme of your piece the way you would like it delivered to the audience. 

The persona package 

The persona is an embodiment of the mood, emotion, attitude and overall feel of the poem. They carry the theme(s) of the poem. Creating a perfect persona is not as easy as it may sound but it is also not impossible. It is through the subject matter, proper grammar, powerful literary styles and critical points-of-view on issues that you can make your persona stand out. This is the persona package! 

It is way more difficult to write a poem that does not have a persona than to write one with a clear persona. As you write, the goal is to make your audience feel the persona’s emotions. If the persona is crying, make your audience cry with them. Where there is laughter on your persona’s side, there should be laughter in your audience’s side too. The reason you will win those free poetry contests is because your persona you made everyone who read your poem understand the persona and sympathize with them. 

How to structure your persona 

Now this is the tricky bit. There are many ways to go about it though. To start with, why not work with something that you are very familiar with? Here is a tip if you are looking to submit content for a free poetry contests - the simplest persona to work with would be yourself. It could be the real version of yourself or a fantasy one. Put yourself in the poem as the persona and speak to your audience from the paper. A bit abstract but it works powerfully. You will not have to try and think of ‘what would Jesus do’ – if Jesus is your persona. What would you do? What would you say? 

Secondly, you are not limited in the nature of the persona. Personae come in all sorts of forms- they can be animals, objects, events etc. Your persona can be a storm, you are not limited to writing about people. Imagine writing about a hurricane in the Atlantic and the journeys it takes from its conception off the coast of Senegal, its interaction with the angry waves, the first meeting with human beings. What did this tropical storm see? What did it hear? The uniqueness of your content wins you the awards in the poetry competitions.