Calligrams are not for the faint hearted. There are several technical difficulties you would need to overcome to achieve an aesthetic shape for your poem that would echo the topic of theme.
The image below is a poem by American writer John Hollander. It is description and visualisation, combined. See how he has worked the lines into a superb image of a swan and its reflection in the water. This technique transforms a good poem into a great one.
Some of our own Invisible Poets group have already started to write poems in calligram format. Matt Elmore's recent offering 'Sexy You' is an example:
My advice would be to write the poem first. Choose a topic to write about that can easily be turned into an image. The poem does not necessarily need to rhyme. What it does need to be is easy to manipulate into shapes. This is where the fun starts. Once you have written the poem, you then need to mould it into the shape of the topic. Good luck - it can be a lot of fun, but also a real challenge!
Steve Wheeler
