By The Fire Edpisode 141: Challenge 5: Horror Romance poems

Hey Horror addicts, we just had our fourth challenge in the horroraddicts.net Next Great Horror Writer Challenge. The challenge for this episode was to write a 650 to 700-word horror poem. The poem could be rhyming or free form. Writers needed to know how to convey a romantic situation and will be judged on sexiness, style and creating a horror romance theme.

Combining romance and horror in a poem can be even harder than writing on one topic or the other, but if you think about it romance and horror are topics that go hand in hand. For instance, if someone loves someone and that person doesn’t love them back it could be considered horror. Also, the idea of losing someone you love to death is a topic that scares everyone. One good example of a horror romance poem that I can think of is a song by Alice Cooper called This House Is Haunted. This song reads like a poem and it’s about a man living in a house haunted by his dead lover. Though if you look at the lyrics they could be interpreted as something different in someone else’s eyes and that’s what makes poetry complicated.

The Next Great  Writer Challenge is really putting the participants to the test. The whole point of this competition is to get writers to flex their literary muscles and this challenge does just that. In my opinion writing, poetry can be harder than writing a short story or even a novel. Poems are all about emotion and expressing emotion isn’t always easy. I think it’s hard to get your message across in a poem and then there is a whole other aspect to it which is getting your audience to understand what you’re trying to say.

A reader can interpret a poem that you wrote in lots of different ways. You may have written it but the reader might not get your message and instead get a completely different idea from what your work. You have to have a certain mindset to write poetry and a certain mindset to understand it. I have to admit that I usually have a hard time understanding poetry but there are some out there that I enjoy.

My favorite poem is Death by Emily Dickenson. This is a short poem but there is so much meaning here and so much is being said that to me it comes across as brilliant. I always thought the main idea she was trying to get across was her fear of death and how she wishes she was immortal. Though if you could talk to her about it, she might say that she had something completely different in mind. Emily Dickenson may not have been considered a horror poet but to me, that one is pretty scary.

When most people think of horror poets they think of Edgar Allen Poe or Lord Byron, but there is a lot more out there if you are willing to look. Do you have a favorite horror romance poem or just a favorite poem in general? Have you written some poetry that you want to share? Let us know in the comments and while you’re at it, let us know what you thought of the poems in episode 141.