Tjyylli

I often write short poems and quotes here: https://www.mirakee.com/atd, but I really want to hear from someone professional to give their valuable feedback on my work, so that I know where exactly I stand in the world of poets and poetry and improve myself at the same time.

How can I connect with someone like that?

Go to a local university and speak with a writer in residence or a professor who is well-respected. Take creative writing courses and listen to the feedback.

Join a writers group - but remember, being told that your work is far from perfect is the point.

Poetry is such an intensely personal and universal form that you must just keep writing. Listen to others, but heed your own instincts too. Write to develop your voice and eventually you will break out of your juvenilia and into your mature works.

Read the great poets - see what they did and learn from them. Immerse yourself in their works.

Understand that poetry is not something one usually writes for profit, but for pleasure and the absolute soul-driven necessity of getting those brilliant images down on paper.

Learn the constraints of your chosen form and discover the freedom within them. Study the rules so that you will know when you can ignore one.

There are many places to get good feedback for your work. You said you wanted a professional to look over your work and in that case, if you plan on publishing, I would suggest hiring an editor.

But you can go to a community of good writers such as silver pen writers or scribophile. However, I would like to point out that you also need to get feedback from normal people, as they are the ones who will one day be reading your work. wattpad is a great community for this. Who knows maybe I'll read it if it's on there :)

For more communities here is a link to an article I believe will help:
https://nybookeditors.com/2015/11/11-top-writing-communities-you-should-join-and-why/

Hope this is helpful :)

Poetry is a tough art to critique, because it's extremely personal, making it very subjective. In particular, given the modern forms tend to be rule-breaking, it can also be hard to judge, even on a technical level. It's also not a commercially remunerative artform, so even the feedback of the market doesn't tell you much.

With all that in mind, your best bet for feedback is a local group of people passionate about poetry. Most communities have these, if you look hard enough for them. Poetry is intrinsically an oral art, so participating in live readings will help you improve as a poet anyway, but you'll also get feedback both from your audience and your peers. (It is possible that you might be able to reach out personally to some poet who might be willing to offer advice, or even mentor you, but going through a poetry group is probably a more reliable route to that than a cold call or email.)

Keep in mind that different poetry groups (and different poets) may have their own styles and preferences. If your poetry isn't a good match with the group you've selected, they may not appreciate it for reasons that have little to do with quality.

Step one is to get feedback that you're basically on the right track. A lot of people don't feel ready to show their poems to anyone (maybe outside of close friends or family) and need some encouragement first. You're past this step.

Step two is a professional editor or reader. Other answers have covered this in detail.

So I'm going to give you some intermediate steps. Ones that give you direct feedback from consumers of your poetry.

1. Go to open mike nights for poetry (I'd avoid mixed open night unless you're sure it's one where people stick around and listen to the poetry) and see what sort of reaction you get. Audience reactions during and immediately after your reading and also reactions from people who might come up to you afterwards.




2. Submit your poetry to a few magazines (low level, not top board quite yet) or contests. My local county fair includes poetry categories with the arts submissions; yours might too.

First of all, let me say that I loved what I read on your site. Beautiful words and thoughts. I am no professional poet however. I guess you will just have to do some 'cold calling' if you are looking for professionals - check out the blogs of some of the contemporary poets you like and message them to see if they would be willing to review your work. You can find a lot of poets on tweetspeakpoetry.com and if you start engaging there including commenting on other posts etc., you are sure to find some folks willing to review your poems. On another note - I believe a poet does not merely write for other poets but for the common man (or woman). If you want a 'conversational style' review then a general review site could be another alternative - here is a review of poetry from a layman's perspective: zavesti.com/whispers-of-death-by-ronald-kihali/ (note - I work for zavesti.com). There are also a lot of other general review sites if you search for "book bloggers" - many of them would happily review your book of poetry. Hope this helps.