Poetry can be lyrical and beautiful, expressing new love and happiness. Or it can be harsh and cruel, clawing into the darkest of human emotions. It can be satirical and witty, laughing at the ironic realities of life.
Many people are put off by poetry. They don’t understand it. They think it is too complex or deep. But poetry is like art, some of it you can pass over, some of it seems technically interesting, and some of it calls to your soul.
Poetry can be written for itself or be included in another medium. Places where you may find poetry are in books of poems, literary novels, novels written in verse, children’s picture books, and fiction that uses letters, poems, song lyrics, or other inventive ways to help tell the story. Like in a musical where the song lyrics help move the plot forward, poems can be used the same way.
Practicing poetry can also help with fiction writing because its purpose is to make the reader feel something without directly telling the reader, which is the common author’s advice: Show, don’t tell. It also makes the author consider word choice and write as concisely as possible, both tools in a fiction writer’s toolbox as well.
Whatever your reason for learning poetry, this article aims to give you the basics. And while I’m not an expert—my Trapper Keeper with several angsty teen poems along with the few first chapters of multiple novels started and unfinished in high school can attest—feel free to learn along with me as I research and practice.
A poem uses literary techniques to express a story, an idea, or a feeling, and sometimes all three. It is more about emotion and experience than clarity.
Writing poetry is just as simple or as complicated as you make it. Think about poetry you’ve read that you love. Did you start with Shel Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends, The Mother Goose Rhymes, the lyrics of a favorite song, or the first stanza of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star by Jane Taylor that was turned into a song that shares a tune with the Alphabet song?
One of my own favorites is The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes which was turned into a song by Loreena McKennitt. My love for the dark, gothic, and unhappy endings also comes through in my choice of poetry and music. What can I say?
How to Start Writing Poetry
1. Read Poetry
Enjoy it. Dissect it. Out loud. Analyze it. Understand it. Love it more.
Reading out loud and listening to the rhythm of emphasis on syllables, rhyme schemes, alliteration, assonance, and everything the poet has put into their word choices can really inspire you. You’ll find that the importance of musicality in poetry is one of its more beautiful aspects.
One of my most memorable attempts at poetry writing was inspired by the syllable emphasis and rhyme scheme of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven. I love the slithering sounds of the “silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain.”
2. Brainstorm
Draw a mind map, take a nature walk, or go for a drive, and decide what you want to write about. Your theme is the heart of your poem, what you wish the reader to take away from the experience.
The main idea of your poem can come from your life, world history or events, the everyday life of the average person, nature, religion, or anything else that inspires you.
Choose words that bring those thoughts, tone, and emotions alive. Think about the senses, sounds, sights, smells, tastes, and touch. Consider colors, objects, and other sights that evoke memories.
Use stream of thought to allow your brain to make connections you might otherwise not make.
Inspiration comes from many places: a certain image, a line of repetition, a theme. Begin there and work your way out. Ask yourself questions about why that thing is staying with you, what it represents, and how you can share that experience with others.
When Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote Afternoon on a Hill, she likely had a vision in her mind of a scene she experienced on that day and the emotions it invoked in her. A list of words likely included would have been glad, sun, flowers, grass, clouds, and quiet. The reader can almost envision the scene just from these few words, but she added more detail and emotion to the scene as she put it together into lines and stanzas.
3. Join Poetry Groups
Throughout history writers and poets have banded together in friend groups and societies to discuss their favorite subjects. Consider the Poetry Society of America, Poetry Foundation, The International Poetry Society, The Academy of American Poets, National Federation of State Poetry Societies, Inc., local poetry groups, poetry slams, poetry club (like a book club), or just people you know who enjoy poetry.
If you prefer poetry focused on children and youth, consider joining the Society for Children’s Books Writers and Illustrators.
It may be obvious, but discussing favorite poetry, reading together, and critiquing one another’s poems can help you learn and grow as a poet.
Essential Steps For All Poetry Writing
4. Draft First
Write in prose the idea of the poem you are trying to create before working on incorporating rhyming, metre, similes, punctuation, line breaks and more to give emphasis to certain sections of your poem.
Don’t worry about having the perfect words, the perfect first sentence, or anything like that. Any type of art takes practice and multiple drafts to get the finished product that speaks to you.
Art isn’t about being perfect, but about getting across something much deeper. Certain cultures purposely put imperfections into their art to keep themselves humble and keep the focus on the purpose of the art.
5. Choose a Style
As a new poet, consider starting slowly with the shortest and simplest rhyming patterns. But form and structure can also tell the reader what the theme of the work may be. Shakespeare’s sonnets are generally about love, Dr. Suess’s rhymes are about being silly, haikus are usually about nature-both of man and the world.
Even free verse needs some thought about the tone and rhythm of the poem and how they will inform the theme you are trying to get across.
Lewis Carroll’s poems in Alice in Wonderland mostly seem to take inspiration from other famous poems at the time matching in style if not outright using some of the words and themes as influence.
6. Language
Practice using different descriptions to invoke the same emotion or idea. Come up with unique similes and metaphors. Or analogies across the entire poem.
Discover concrete imagery to symbolize abstract ideas. Focus on the small to explain the bigger emotions.The more specific, the higher weight the emotions will carry.
In Truth of May, G.A. Studdert Kennedy compares the old men with glasses who make all the decisions about the war to owls.
Sound devices require a read-aloud to make sure you’ve achieved the lyrical quality you’re looking for. The shorter the medium, the more critical word choice becomes.
7. Mirroring
Bring your poem back to where it started at the end. Either a word, or line of refrain, or just a theme. In My Last Duchess by Robert Browning, he begins by bringing attention to a piece of art, the painting of his last wife and reminiscing about who she was and what led to her death.
Then he ends by returning the conversation back around to the painting and ending by pointing out another piece of art, a bronze statue.
8. Break Away
Set it aside and take a break, hours, days, months, and let the idea settle before going back to it. Sometimes it will be obvious what revisions are needed once you come back with a fresh mind, and sometimes you will read it and realize it is ready to go.
Now is the time to ask others for their thoughts. Have them read it and tell you how it made them feel. Any consistent feedback is something you should mull over before you make any changes.
9. Revise
Revising is my favorite step in any form of writing. It is when you make yourself appear brilliant to the reader, like you knew what you were doing all along.
Switch out weak words with stronger verbs or alliteration to bring emphasis to a section. Create an unlikely metaphor that truly gets to the heart of your poem. Toss away the first five ideas and find something truly unique about your worldview.
Don’t forget to keep your voice. This is a very personal art form which expresses your deepest and innermost feelings. When your poem makes you smile, cry, or laugh, you know you’ve done it. Your reader will do the same.
How to Learn to Write Poetry
10. Write Poems
For some people, diving right into the deep end is best. Don’t expect to write anything earth shattering at first. But doing is learning and you’ll learn as you go.
The best part about poetry—it’s shorter than other forms of writing, for the most part. So you get more practice, faster.
11. Writing Courses or Workshops
Some writers want more structured learning before attempting something new. Taking courses on any type of writing, structure, editing, and revising can help your understanding and release your creativity.
Fictionary offers classes on all stages of writing fiction and narrative driven nonfiction. Many of the principles could apply to writing poetry.
12. Use a Structured Form
Haikus, limericks, sonnets, cinquains or other short forms can help you dip your toe into the water of poetry. While they are more constricting, the structure could be exactly what you need to feel comfortable filling in the blanks until the emotion of poetry overtakes you.
Experimenting with diverse forms can help you find what works for you and each emotion may require varied forms to properly express it.
13. Tools
A thesaurus or rhyming dictionary can help you find just the right words. But you don’t have to use obscure or flowery language to write a poem. Make it natural. Make it you.
The dictionary shows the syllables that have emphasis within each word, so you can find the perfect meter.
Learn about meter, the combination of stressed and unstressed syllables that add rhythm to your lines. Study different types of rhyming such as true rhyme, end rhyme, internal rhyme, slant rhyme, and more.
Repetition can be done with a word or phrase. Many popular poems and songs use this to make a point. In The Highwayman, Noyes tends to repeat a theme in the last three lines of a stanza. For example,
“Then look for me by moonlight,
Watch for me by moonlight,
I’ll come to thee by moonlight…”
The pattern is used to create tension and atmosphere.
Onomatopoeia is also used for tension in The Highwayman. As Bess strains to listen for his coming in order to warn her lover, the reader gets,
“Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horsehoofs ringing clear;
Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they deaf that they did not hear?”
And as the rider comes closer, we get more tlot-tlots in the next stanza. And the reader experiences the sound right along with the character in the poem.
Alliteration is the repetition of consonants, and assonance is alliteration for vowels. William Wordsworth plays with assonance in his poem, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.
“…Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.”
Can you hear all the short i’s in the first line, short e’s in the second, and short a’s in the third? It is subtly done, but adds a flowing calmness to the final lines of a poem about clouds and daffodils (my favorite flower-maybe that’s why I love this poem).
Similes, metaphors, symbols, and allegories are fairly well known and understood literary devices, but what about hyperbole? Hyperbole is when something is exaggerated in order to bring emphasis to its importance. Ralph Waldo Emmerson wrote one of the most famously remembered hyperboles in his poem, The Concord Hymn.
“Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.”
The shot wasn’t literally heard outside of normal hearing range. But the emotional meaning is that this shot—this particular shot—was important to these men, to history, and to people throughout the world.
Tips on Writing Poetry
The most important thing to know is that there is no wrong way to write a poem. So if you don’t follow all 13 of these steps, that’s okay! Here are three more tips for writing poetry.
- While literary and sound devices are fun and can add great depth to a poem, if they don’t support the meaning, then don’t use them.
- Keep a journal to write down ideas, important things and emotions you experienced during the day, or images that stay in your mind’s eye.
- The title may be your first line of poetry or it may inform what the subject of the poem will be about.