An Introduction To Iambic Meter

6 min readApr 16, 2018

Hello!

We’re assuming that most of you who are reading this have joined us from our group — APM Nation. The reason we’ve written this blog post is to help you write a poem for today’s prompt.

To fully understand what iambic meter is, you need to understand what syllables, feet and stressed and unstressed syllables are.

That’s why this blog post is structured as follows:

a. What is a syllable?
b. What are stressed and unstressed syllables?
c. What is a foot?
d. What is iambic meter?

Right. Let’s get into it!

A. What is a syllable?

A syllable is the unit of sound in poetry. By definition, a syllable has one vowel sound. That vowel sound may or may not be surrounded by consonant sounds.

Let’s look at some examples of single-syllable words:

a. ‘I’ — a single-syllable word with only one vowel sound, and zero consonant sounds.

b. ‘Be’, ‘Free’— single-syllable words, with one vowel sound, preceded by one consonant sound.

c. ‘At’, ‘End’ — single-syllable words, with one vowel sound, followed by one consonant sound.

d. ‘Hat’, ‘Slam’ — single-syllable words, which are preceded and followed by consonant sounds.

Therefore, if you’re wondering how many syllables a word has, ask yourself: how many vowel sounds does it have? The number of syllables in the word is equal to the number of vowel sounds it has.

Here are some examples of multi-syllable words:

a. 2 syllables — panther, waiting, captain

b. 3 syllables — vacation, revision, avenger

c. 4 syllables — definition, incidental, infinity

and so on…

B. What Are Stressed And Unstressed Syllables?

While speaking, we naturally emphasise on certain syllables, and say certain syllables without emphasising on them.

For example, please say the word “distract” aloud.

You will notice that you pronounce it as — dis-TRACT. The emphasis goes on the second syllable, ie, “tract”. You don’t put any emphasis on the first syllable, ie, “dis”.

The syllables which we emphasise on while speaking are called stressed syllables.

Similarly, say the word “demolish” aloud. You’ll notice that you say — de-MOL-ish. Here, the stressed syllable is the second one. The other 2 are unstressed syllables.

How do you tell if a syllable is stressed?

Here are two tests to conduct, if you are in doubt about whether a syllable is stressed or not.

a. The Emphasis Test

This is the test we conducted above. Here, you simply say the word aloud, and ask yourself: which syllable(s) are you stressing on?

Tip: When you’re doing this test, it’s best to read the entire sentence aloud, instead of just individual words.

b. The “Louder-Higher-Longer” Test

A stressed syllable is one which you say longer, louder or higher (or, sometimes, all 3).

For example, in the word “distract” you’ll notice that you spent saying more time saying the second syllable (‘tract’) than you did saying the first syllable (‘dis’). Hence, the second syllable is the longer syllable, and hence it is stressed.

The trick here is to say the word (or sentence) aloud. Listen to yourself speak, and ask yourself which syllables are being said louder, higher or longer. Those are your stressed syllables! All the other syllables are unstressed syllables.

Important Notes About Stress

a. Don’t be too hard on yourself while determining whether a syllable is stressed or unstressed. It’s not the end of the world if you get a couple of syllables wrong here and there (unless you’re a pro).

b. Go with your gut. If your instinct is telling you that a syllable is stressed, trust it. Most of the time, you’ll be right.

c. If you’re doubtful about how a certain word is pronounced, check howjsay.com to hear the correct pronunciation.

d. Stress varies, according to context. Very often, the same word has different stress pronunciations, according to how it’s being used. For example, let’s examine the word “object” —

OB-ject (noun): a thing. Here, the stress pattern is Stressed (“OB”) -Unstressed (“ject”)
ob-JECT (verb): express opposition to something. Stress pattern: Unstressed (“ob”) - Stressed (“JECT”)

Same word. Different stress patterns.

The key to identifying stress is to say the words aloud. When you do this, it becomes much easier to identify stressed and unstressed syllables.

C. What Is A Foot?

In poetry, a foot is a combination of syllables.

Here are some classic feet in English poetry:

a. Iambic Foot (da-DUM):

An iambic foot contains an Unstressed Syllable followed by a Stressed Syllable (da-DUM).

Iambic foot: unstressed — stressed

b. Trochaic Foot (DUM-da):

A trochaic foot contains a Stressed syllable, followed by an Unstressed Syllable (DUM-da).

Trochaic Foot: stressed — unstressed

c. Anapestic Foot (da-da-DUM)

An anapestic foot contains 2 Unstressed Syllables, followed by 1 Stressed Syllable (da-da-DUM).

Examples: if I fought | you are stars | I demand |

Anapestic Foot: unstressed — unstressed — stressed

d. Dactylic Foot (DUM-da-da)

A dactylic foot contains 1 Stressed Syllable followed by 2 Unstressed Syllables (DUM-da-da).

Examples: Poetry | Horrible | Heritage | Carnage is |

Dactylic Foot: stressed — unstressed — unstressed

Note: There are more kind of feet, but we think these 4 are enough, to start with!

D. What Is Iambic Meter?

A poem is written in iambic meter when it is written in iambic feet.

To refresh your memory, an iambic foot is one where there is an unstressed syllable, and then a stressed syllable. So you just have to keep following this pattern in your poem: unstressed syllable — stressed syllable — unstressed syllable — stressed syllable — unstressed syllable — stressed syllable… (and so on)

Please note that for this poem, you don’t have to write any particular number of syllables per line. However, each line must contain an even number of syllables (either 2 or 4 or 6, etc)

EXAMPLE 1:

Here’s an example of a line written in iambic meter:

I wish I could believe in love again

Let’s examine the line, shall we? If we break it down into stressed & unstressed syllables, it reads like this:

i WISH | i COULD | be-LIEVE | in LOVE | a-GAIN

There are 5 iambic feet in this line. Hence, it is an example of iambic pentameter (5 feet = penta)

EXAMPLE 2:

Now let’s look at a line from an actual poem:

I wandered lonely as a cloud

Let’s break it down:

i WAN- | -dered LONE- | -ly AS | a CLOUD

There are 4 iambic feet in this line. Hence, it is an example of iambic tetrameter (4 feet = tetra)

EXAMPLE 3:

Let’s take an iconic example:

to BE | or NOT | to BE

There are 3 iambic feet, so this is an example of iambic trimeter.

And so on.

YOUR PROMPT FOR TODAY

Your prompt for today is to write a poem in iambic meter. So what you have to do is ensure that you are following the iambic stress pattern (unstressed syllable — stressed syllable) throughout your poem!

If you’ve never done this before, it will be hard. However, that’s what this month is about, right? So go for it!

We don’t care how long or short your poem is, we just want you to get a taste of writing in this meter. We promise, it’ll help you in the future!