A Creator's Guide to Poetry

You Belong!

In a nod to last week’s post - to tumble joyfully down the rabbit hole of discovery is even more fun if you can grab a friend and do it together IRL!

The world fascinates me, and if you know me (and by reading this blog you’re getting a glimpse), you’ll know how excited I get when I see something I think you’ll like too.

When I find someone who finds joy in what I do, it makes me feel more connected to them and more grounded in my own space. I feel as if I “belong.”

Gen Z (aka the loneliest generation) craves this feeling of belonging and the connection it brings. It’s the reason MUSAY is being redesigned - by Gen Z  - to help them find places they can go to meet others who want the vibe and the experience they’re seeking.

Today’s post by Darius Coleman beautifully illustrates the power of museums to build community through belonging and connection. They’re places where artists and people of all stripes (poets, mathematicians, historians, dancers, painters) are welcome to meet and share their craft. For more on this, keep reading; we’ve also dropped some resources and ways for you to discover your own path to poetic connection at the end of the article.

As always - thank you for being part of MUSAY’s journey. We are grateful for you!

Editor’s Note: Today is the first of a two-part series from MUSAY’s Darius Coleman about how he approaches his published poetry as well as tips and tricks for writing your own poetry.

One of the ways I came into contact with museums in college was through poetry. 

Of course, I was already writing poetry then. I was already on my way to the first poetry collection I’d publish under my own name. My professor was not only an amazing poet; he was an amazing photographer and musician. 

A lot of his work was sold in museums. A lot of his poems were displayed in museums around the United States. That was how he got the monetary freedom to volunteer to teach our small group for little to no pay. 

Poetry and museums have been tied together for years. Artists (yes, poets are artists as well!) would perform or share their work there. It was a place to workshop ways to tell their stories and speak their minds with likeminded people. Poetry got me this job: MUSAY’s wonderful founder saw something beautiful in the poetry I sent as a writing sample. In museums, poets saw the community that the MUSAY brand and guests all around the world represent. 

Why am I going on this spiel?

Many people have told me that they’ve always wanted to write poetry, but didn’t know how. They didn’t know where to start or if their writing was going to be good. 

And I want to change that!

My idea is to give you some of my best tips as a poet myself — whether it is the writing of poetry, the reading of it, poets that you should be more familiar with, or anything in between. Hopefully these will help you enjoy writing in a way you’ve never been able to before.

Welcome to the Creator’s Guide to Poetry, Part 1: Word for Word, Bar for Bar. 

One of the first lessons I learned when I started writing poetry took place in my second class at Tennessee State University. I sat in the second row, copying notes on different poetry forms. At the end of class, we got our first poems back that we had written and edited.

When the professor handed mine back, a bunch of words were circled on the page. There was, I felt, a randomness to which words were circled and picked and which words were not. Written on the top of the page was a statement that made me a better poet every time that I wrote from that moment on:

Every word needs to be there for a reason. 

One of the first mistakes that a lot of poets make early is trying to be too profound and replicating famous poets like Edgar Allen Poe by writing in ways they don’t understand. 

If I wrote this post in Old English, it wouldn’t work. Not only would you be unable to understand what I am saying — but because it’s written like that, the barrier to entry is high and my points would not get across. 

When you write a poem, you should make it a goal at the end of your writing phase to circle certain sentences and words and ask yourself three questions: 

1. Why did I write this?

2. Is it crucial to the main point?

3. If I remove it, should I replace it? 

For example, let’s look at a poem from a couple of years ago that I wrote. This is the original version:

I sit in my room. 

The air is stuffy

I need air

Early morning air. 

So I exit my room and begin to walk 

I stop on a set of stairs

Stairs that lead my eyes directly to three trees. 

One Tall

One Sturdy

One Old. 

So there I sit. 

Luckily, we also have my revision notes. This was my first time revising it, and while I was proud of myself for the entire poem, the beginning felt choppy. There was no rhythm (keep this term in mind) to the words, and we as readers aren’t sure where the story is going. Look at the following changes.

I sit in my room

where the air is stuffy.

I feel like I can’t breathe

I need air

the early morning air. 

I exit my room and begin to walk, 

walk until I feel tired

I stop on a set of stairs

stairs that lead my eyes directly to three trees. 

One Tall

One Sturdy

One Old. 

So there I sit. 

I made only three changes, yet it already moves more smoothly and feels more poetic. The first change was to add two lines: “I feel like I can’t breathe” and “walk until I feel tired.” These give the audience a clear picture of why the subject is doing something. 

The second change was the punctuation. Something that you subconsciously recognize but don’t think about often is that every time a line breaks, you take a mental breath and break. That break changes, depending on if there is a comma, a period, or nothing. 

Poets that use punctuation well are able to control how you read and hear a poem in your head. For example, even with a line break “I sit in my room / where the air is stuffy” reads better than “I sit in my room. / Where the air is stuffy” because there is a pause in time and in the statement. 

The third change I made was putting another line between the three trees, and “so there I sit.” This was an important change, because the poem itself would end up being named “But still I sit.” Establishing this phrase with an extra space gives readers more time to understand that line as important. 

Those were only three changes made, but they were changes that incrementally made the poem better by putting focus on each line and giving a reason for why it’s there. 

Sometimes the reason doesn’t even need to be super important to one person or another. There have been many times that I’ve placed lines in certain spots just because I like them. I like nice wordplay and metaphors, so some of my poems have lines that I find fun and interesting in the context of the story. Poetry is an open canvas. You have the autonomy to pick whatever you want and when. 

This is how museums served poets of the past. It’s a safe space to tweak their words into something beautiful that they could then perform or publish. Museums also are a great place to learn more about the art form itself. 

In fact, I’d like to give and show you not only a bunch of different forms you can use for your writing, but also different literary devices to spice up your poems. 

But that’ll be for next time.

About Darius Coleman

Darius doesn’t just see the world. He feels it — deeply. He takes it in so it can surprise him, challenge him, and ultimately inspire him to dream, to write, to create. Whether it’s prose or poetry, sports or culture, Darius’s voice is one you must hear. A 2025 Magna Cum Laude graduate of Tennessee State University’s School of Mass Communications, Darius is only getting started and MUSAY is overjoyed he’s starting here.

Museums for Poets

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” are words known to all, but they were written for a museum exhibition catalogue to raise money for the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal by poet Emma Lazarus. The poem is now on display at the Museum of the City of New York (one of my NYC havens).

Poetry is intentionally incorporated into museum spaces - a few to discover are listed below:

US Holocaust Memorial Museum

National September 11 Memorial Museum

Emily Dickinson Museum (poetry workshops, anyone?!)

American Poetry Museum

The Homewood Museum at Johns Hopkins University (poetry workshops in Baltimore, the city of Edgar Allen Poe!)

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About MUSAY

MUSAY is an app that transforms phones from isolation devices into discovery tools to  connect people with cultural experiences they never knew they needed — creating community around shared moments of awe while helping cultural institutions thrive.

MUSAY believes people, especially Gen Z, deserve more than endless scrolling through other people's lives and has engaged them in its design process.  The result is an App that gets people off their sofa and off their screen by helping them find things to do that fit their vibe; with all the things to do being at museums.  

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