How to Properly Write a Poem

When writing poetry it’s important to be aware of the fact that these are YOUR words. In freeform poetry, you can fully decide what to write and how to write it. You can simply throw rules out the window and fully follow your own heart. Just start scribbling and at some point, if something you wrote looks like anything, then that’s your poem. However, there are also rules if you choose to follow for perhaps a more cohesive, if not regular, manner of writing poetry. There are also many steps you can follow or read up on before writing that can and will help you write something that hopefully can connect with a lot of readers.

Types of Poetry

A few different types of poems exist. Some of them have stricter rules to follow than others, but generally, they offer the reader a slightly more specific experience. Here are some of the most popular types of poems.

Free Verse is the type of poetry that has the least amount of rules. It’s also particularly easy for younger children to write as well. You don’t have to be amazing at writing to write a good Free Verse poem. No need for rhyming or any sort of rhythm, just start writing on a blank page whatever is running through your mind at any given moment in verse form. One of the greatest poets of all time, Emily Dickinson wrote free verse.

Narrative Poems are poems that tell a story. It usually includes a beginning, middle, and end of the story that the poem is telling. This kind of poetry can also include fully-fledged characters and conflict between them. It’s an interesting way to tell a story, as the reader can be taken by beautiful wording into a cinematic journey.

Haiku is a type of poem that truly entertains the reader. Writing it can help expand your vocabulary, although it’s a short-form poem with only three lines. It originally comes from Japan. In order of each line, you write five-seven-five syllables to complete a haiku.

Sonnet is a love-oriented type of poem. It’s a 14 line poem, in which rhyming is used to express the author’s love in some manner of writing. Sonnets are perhaps the most stereotypical poems in as far as most people assume all poems are about love.

Limerick is the type of poetry that contains specific rhyming within five lines. The subject of a limerick can be a tale, or it can include simple facts within the lines. The system of rhyming goes AABBA.

Ballads are the kind of poems that can also be of a musical nature. It basically includes storytelling in the form of music through melodic sounds. They are plot-driven, as they usually tell of a musical story by describing ongoing events in a specific order.

Soliloquy is the type of poem in which the main character of the story talks to themself all throughout. They usually express inner thoughts that the character is thinking but not saying out loud in the scene.

Steps to Writing a Good Poem

Perhaps the first and most obvious step towards you being good at writing poetry is for you to read as much as you can. Soaking in information from famous to lesser-known poets is the best way for you to know what works and what doesn’t generally. You’ll need to be able to develop your own identity but it can never hurt to see how some of the greatest minds throughout history wrote poetry.

Once you’re ready to start writing, don’t obsess over making everything perfect. In fact, mistakes are a great way to tell progress. You can later compare your current writing to the earlier one and see how much you’ve grown. Don’t even stress about rules or anything related, just feel free to express yourself however you see fit.

After you’ve written down a few poems with little structure or without overthinking much, now you can write something bigger. Maybe try to tell a specific story or some specific inner thoughts about anything random like the moon (very common for poets), or how that sandwich you ate earlier made you feel. Once you’ve gotten down to writing in more and more detail, you’ve already made significant and noteworthy progress.

If you want more of a challenge, try choosing a type of poem with rules to follow. The ability to be creative within specific confines is a very good sign that you have what it takes to write proper poetry.

Do not forget to look over what you wrote at the end. The best way to improve is to judge your writing as if someone else wrote it. Try looking at things from different perspectives constantly. This not only helps with creativity but it’s also a good way for you to get better over time.

You can’t improve if you don’t try and try again. Pick up a notebook, open a Word file, or the Notes app on your phone, and just start writing down what you feel. Who knows what amazing poetry can come out of that. Being creative is always good and there’s no better way to express that creativity than with poetry.

Photo: Oleksii Didok/shutterstock.com

If you want to learn more about haiku read this:

Haiku – the Art of Japanese Poetry

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