Andrew Fusek Peters, renowned poet and one of the writer's of the teenage verse novel, Crash offers his top tips for writing poetry. Andrew's advice will help you get going with poetry.

You can find out more about Andrew Fusek Peter's work by checking out his website

Here are Andrew's top poetry writing tips:

Anywhere and everywhere. Some from my own experiences at school - being bullied, awful food, falling in love, that snog etc! Also, I visit a lot of schools and have a keen eye and big, curious ears that pick up on what's going down or the latest weird hairstyle or short-tie situation.

Also, I guess having been a mad teenager that went off the rails {I'm a good boy these days}, I have very strong opinions about cigarettes, booze, drugs etc {see Poems With Attitude and the follow up - Poems With Attitude Uncensored. My wife and I have just written a verse novel Crash and we wrote this after seeing all the flowers now springing up at the side of the road where someone has died. And how many times have nutters overtaken us round corners or sat on our bumper. So, life is the inspiration and if you are looking to write - it should be relevant to you - poems about the chip shop, being dumped, that first kiss, music, clothes, food - it's all up for grabs. A poem doesn't have to be about trees in autumn {though I like those poems too!}

First and foremost, don't just do what's been done before - ie all the old cliches like - if you're nervous - there's butterflies in my stomach - it's a cliché - it's old, unfresh language and the trick is to come up with new images. i.e. instead of butterflies - why not: I was so nervous, there was a JCB churning away in my stomach. It sounds weird, but that's the point - not to be dull. And poems need good images, similes, metaphor, personification - it's all important. People are lazy, but it's like building a house - if you build it shoddily, it will collapse.

So if you scrawl a poem in five minutes, don't expect to ever get published - it takes effort and learning and craft and technique. Read some of the best poets dead or alive - Check out Roger McGough, Keats, Gerard Manley Hopkins, that playwright bloke who did some sonnets {I think his name was Will}.

Personification is fabulous - imagine a tree saying "I live in Barkingham Palace, and drink Bud-weiser" Bad jokes are great in a poem and wordplay is all part of making your verse come to life.

That's a hard question - it depends on the subject and the book I am working on. I believe poetry is broad church and that means I like all different styles from free verse {if done well with lots of imagery} to more structured poems. It does take skill to pull off a roundel/pantoum or decent sonnet and it's worth studying the form as it shows craft and effort.

I also love performance poetry in its many guises and {sadly for an old git like me} I even wrote a rap for the new verse novel Crash which we went onto record {check it out on www.tallpoet.com}.

I am always reading poems aloud to my kids, wife, audiences round the country to see if it works on both stage and page - it needs to have an internal rhythm.

I go away from it for a bit, or get down on my knees to Polly {my other half who does most of the books with me} and beg her for editorial intervention.

Often, the end of a poem can come at the most unlikely time and then, like a butterfly, I just need my net to catch it. It's a mix of being in the flow, inspired and all that and working at it like a dog and having the humility {who me?} to ask for help.

As always, read other poets, and see what books are being published by the still living ones and those dead people who were up to no poetic good a few hundred years ago. It's fine if you just want to write about being bullied, falling in love just for your diary or yourself. But if you want an audience, or readership or want to take it more seriously, learn from other people.

It's arrogant to think you can just pen a few lines and get a million quid deal {not that our advances have hit anything like the heights of that JK person…yet}. It takes work, obsession, persistence and a compulsion to explore this amazing language we have and to play with it and stretch it out to tell stories in inventive ways. Good luck!

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