Post Category Help / Idea (Poem Page)

Evening all,

I have a poetry category on my site and basically I would like to achieve this when you go to the poetry page:
——————————————————————————-
“Welcome to the poetry page please chose a poem below to view it.”

Poem 1 | Poem 2 | Poem 3| Poem 4 | Poem 5 | Poem 6
Poem 7 | Poem 8 | Poem 9| Poem 10 | Poem 11 | Poem 12
——————————————————————————–

The “Poem 1” will actually be poem titles. And instead of having every single poem listed vertically, like a blog entry, with full text, I only want the links to appear as above.

Then when you select a poem to read, you then view the poem like you would a blog entry, and the poem list remains at the top instead of defaulting to
————————————————————————-
<<(Previous Blog Entry) (Next Blog Entry)>>
Peom 1
———————————————————————-

Now, should I make a dedicated Page in WP for this? Under “Pages” ?

Or will I have to hardcode this page? and put it in the template directory like “poems.php”

I just don’t know how I would go about creating the poem page to display the poetry links and then go to the page that would display the poem with the poetry links above it.

Also, I would like to post a poem as a blog entry, but again, it gets posted to that poetry category, and of course (repeating myself here sorry) when you go to the poetry category (page) you see the links then click on the link…etc…

This seems like it’s going to be too difficult to accomplish!

Thanks for any help in advance,
Morvak