If you’ve been anywhere near social media in the past few years, you’ve probably noticed that poetry is booming. It’s been pulled off the “Classics” shelves, dusted off, and reborn for a new generation.
So you might be wondering how to start writing poetry of your own. Although poetry can be a little intimidating to new writers, it’s really all about structured expression. We’ll guide you through everything you need to know about writing great poetry, and give you a step-by-step process to write your very first poem. This guide is for beginners who want to learn how to write poetry from scratch.
Poetry vs. prose: what’s the difference?
Poetry and prose—that is, short stories, novels, essays, and so on—are often examined in contrast, but they actually have a lot in common. The only real difference between poetry and prose writing is the line break.
This just means that most poems don’t go all the way across the page; they stop part way through before moving onto the next line. This is what gives a poem its form. We’ll look at this in more detail down below.
Poems also pay particular attention to things like metre and fluidity, which makes them sound more musical when read out loud, drawing on deliberate rhythm in literature. Grammar conventions are less strict in poetry than in prose. Sometimes poets will leave out commas or even entire words to make a sentence flow more smoothly.
Most poems are also shorter than most prose pieces (although there are exceptions to both). This means there’s less room for concrete detail, and a poet needs to use fewer words to convey a big picture. You’ll find some tips on how to do this further in this article.
To get a stronger sense of how poetry is put together, try to read the work of other poets. Literary journals and magazines are a great place to start, as well as the classics.
Elements of a good poem
As you can probably guess, not all poems are created equal. What separates a poem that’s just kind of okay from a truly great one? The best poems pay particular attention to all of these key elements, whether it’s Elizabethan love poetry or contemporary poems being written today.
Rhythm
The earliest poems began as ways to tell stories and record histories when most people didn’t yet have the skills to write them down. This meant they had to be memorable and beautiful to listen to. They did this by using rhythm.
Rhyme and metre play an important role in a poem’s rhythm. Even though today’s poets don’t use these tools as rigorously as their predecessors, they still make sure each line of a poem flows smoothly and doesn’t catch the ear with any jarring syllables.
Musicality
Closely related to rhythm is the musicality of a poem, or the way the piece “sings” from the page. This is done with poetic devices like assonance, consonance, and alliteration—all different ways sounds repeat and create fluidity in a line of writing.
Using repeating sounds gives the impression of rhyme without the overt nursery song connotations of true rhymes. For example, “rain” and “made” don’t look like they rhyme on the page, but the common “ay” sound makes them sound complementary when read aloud.
Imagery
Poetry is characterized by its evocative mood and sense of place. Poets take inspiration from the world around them, incorporating imagery in literature, using physical details and atmospheric language to bring their poem to life.
As you develop your poems, try to use all the senses. You can use sensory language to make a poem touching, funny, hopeful, joyful, unsettling, and anything in between.
Mood
On that note, great poetry should elicit a strong emotion in the reader or listener by carefully crafting the mood in literature. Your poem should make the reader feel what you’re feeling as you write it—or, what you hope to be feeling in the future. This feeling, more than the exact words or phrases, is what will stay with your readers for a long time.
Form
All poetry has a form—even free verse! Form can range from heavily structured Shakespearean sonnets to the many types of poetry in use today, from traditional to experimental, to the looser contemporary poetry of today. But even modern poets carefully consider what architectural shape best fits the message they’re trying to convey.
Line length, stanza length, and how the words are arranged on the page all contribute to a poem’s form. We’ll take a closer look at this down below.
How to write poetry for the first time
Ready to get started writing your own poems? We’ll take you through it step by step.
Step 1: Start with the title
Your first mission is to come up with a cracking title. Spend around five minutes listing possible titles for your poem. They can be silly or serious, introspective or outspoken.
It’s important to note that your title doesn’t have to be permanent; you may end up changing it later as your poem develops. But a strong title gives you a place to build outwards.
Step 2: Create a word palette
Next, brainstorm a list of words or short phrases that relate to your title. This will give you a palette to work from, just like a painter assembles different colors. You probably won’t use all of them in your final poem, but the more word choices you have, the more specific you can be in the actual writing process.
Think about different ways the words in your title can be interpreted, and what they might mean to different people. For example, if you’ve chosen the title “Heat Wave”, your word palette could include:
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fire
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flush
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candles
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sweat
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sunscreen
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cutoff shorts
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August
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lake house
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summer school
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first love
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passion
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exhaustion
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air conditioning
… and so on.
Keep an eye out for words with similar sounds that you can use for near rhymes. This could include things like black and blink, rain and rage, torn and shore, mother and feather. These don’t have to be perfect rhymes—in fact, the poem will sound more natural if they’re not—but having a loose rhyme scheme will give your poem a sense of musicality and rhythm.
Step 3: Freewrite
Now it’s time to write the first draft of your new poem. Don’t worry about getting it perfect right away; just get your ideas down, drawing from the word palette you created in the previous step.
Just like a short story, a good poem should have a sense of development and momentum. It leaves the reader in a different emotional place than when they began. Think about what you’re trying to say through this poem, and how that core idea and the setting interact.
This is where the scope of your word palette really comes in handy. If you’ve chosen “Heat Wave” as your poem, you might start by describing a sweltering summer day. But then it becomes clear that what the poem is really about is messy first love. Which brings us to…
Step 4: Embrace symbolism and metaphor
Poems are rarely about what they’re really about. Use your word palette to explore how one thing can become a symbol or metaphor for another thing—the heart of your poem.
Consider which words or phrases have more than one meaning, and how you can hint at both meanings within the body of your poem. This will give your poem nuance and layers (and it will look effortless).
Step 5: Find your turning point
Every poem has a key turning point. Usually it’s about two thirds to three-quarters of the way through, but this isn’t a hard and fast rule. The role of the turning point is to drive home the theme or core message of the poem.
Often this will be where the extended metaphor dissolves and the true meaning of the poem is revealed. It might be accompanied by a shift in mood or tone, or the perspective may move to a new time or place. For example, the narrator might shift from recounting a memory to speaking from the present moment.
An effective turning point will hook the reader and cause them to reassess their impression of everything they’ve read so far.
Step 6: Introduce line breaks
By this point, with everything we’ve covered so far, you should have a rough body of work to shape into a poem. You might have some line breaks in it already, or you might have a few paragraphs of text. In either case, it’s time to think more cognitively about where to divide your lines and how your line breaks can best serve your poem.
There are two key elements to consider in your line breaks: visible form, and enjambment.
The visual form just means the lines are all roughly the same length, and don’t awkwardly spill across the page while the next is only a few words. Keeping your lines consistent will make the poem look more polished, and make it look like you know your craft.
Enjambment is a term we haven’t looked at yet, and it means a sentence or idea starts in one line and continues onto the next. If you’re breaking mid-sentence, it should be a natural pause where the speaker would take a breath. But you can also use that pause to heighten tension or create double meanings around the pause. Reading poetry and seeing how other poets have done this is a great way to explore the possibilities of enjambment.
Step 7: Experiment with stanza breaks
If a line of poetry is like a paragraph of a novel, stanzas are like miniature chapters. Each one should center around a new idea. Use a blank space in between every stanza.
Stanzas can be as long or short as you need. Formal poetry usually has stanzas that are all the same length, but modern poetry can be looser and less structured. Just like line breaks, stanza breaks should close on a natural pause—unless you’re using enjambment like a cliffhanger before resolving in the next stanza.
Try out a few different stanza breaks, and read the poem out loud. Even though the words aren’t changing, you’ll find that breaking in different places creates a different effect. Then you can choose the form you like best.
Step 8: Revise, revise, revise
Writing poems, like all mediums of creative writing, is all about revision. Once you’ve completed a strong first draft, let it sit for a day or two. Go for a walk, meet up with friends, watch a movie, etc. Then, come back to your poem with fresh eyes.
Read the poem again and look for any places where you trip over words, or the music seems to stagger, or your images slide into cliché. You’ll often hear things in your poem that you missed visually. Some of the best poems don’t necessarily make logical sense, but they sound beautiful!
Remember that poetry doesn’t have to be as grammatically correct as prose, and it’s okay to remove connective words that disrupt the flow. Remove any unnecessary words or phrases to create a focused, impactful poem.
Finally, writing great poetry takes practice! Try to write a poem once a week, and read a poem once a day. This will get the rhythm into your bones, inspire new ideas, and develop your unique writer’s voice.
Writing poetry is good for the soul
A lot of new poets come in with the idea that they “don’t understand poetry” or “poetry has to be sophisticated”, or any number of class-driven myths about the writing craft. But poetry can be lofty or accessible, serious or funny, imaginative or political, and everything in between. But what it all has in common is that writing poetry will make you a better writer across the board.
Even if you want to write novels or memoirs, experimenting with poetry will give you a deeper and more nuanced grasp of language, rhythm, and the way targeted word choice can elevate a piece of writing. Start keeping a notebook and writing down thoughts and ideas that you can use as jumping off points for new poems.
So don’t be afraid of the blank page. With these tips, you’ll be spinning out poetic magic in no time. Happy writing!
