13 things I’ve learnt about writing poetry over the last decade

I was digging through my old emails recently, looking for something specific to send to a friend, and I stumbled across a set of poems that I’d written in 2010 and 2011. I’d emailed them to myself, probably to print them off for an open mic or to glue into some notebook that’s since been buried in time.

Some of them I remember writing vividly, others I have no memory of whatsoever! It was like reading another person’s words. I was 18ish, at the start of my first year of uni, and reading the poetry is a strange window to my younger self. All that innocence, self-consciousness, idealism and vulnerability. My god. Being a teenager is the worst.

The poems aren’t great by any means, but they’re sort of charming. I was just starting to write and didn’t know much about the form at all.

After 10 years, I’ve learnt quite a bit about writing. My poetry’s changed and (I hope) improved as a result, but that’s not up to me to judge! Either way, here are the rules I always try to stick to when I’m writing.

Write like no-one’s going to read it.

This doesn’t mean sharing your deepest, darkest or most embarrassing secrets, necessarily. It’s more about getting rid of that voice in your head that’s constantly saying ‘but what will people think?’. If you listen to that, you’ll naturally write in a more reserved and conservative way.

The page is yours. Fill it with any weird fucked up ideas you want. Go crazy, go dark, go silly, go unsettling, go mawkishly sentimental. If you don’t get all of this out of your head and onto the page you won’t ever get to the heart of what you’re capable of creating.

Having said this, if you do want to improve as a writer you will need to share your writing eventually. But get it out first, then you can worry about that part later!

You will hate what you write 90% of the time. But don’t let that stop you.

When it comes to writing or creating anything probably, you will always be your harshest critic. Of course. You know all of the myriad ways you could have written something differently.

You will inevitably spend a lot of time writing stuff that you don’t think is very good. And that can be deeply demoralising. I’ve personally gone through months and years even of not being able to write anything I’m happy with.

But don’t ever get rid of it! Take a break, look back at it in a month’s time and you may see something interesting that you were too busy being hard of yourself to see at the time.

Also don’t just force yourself to write incessantly. Read, go to poetry nights and writing workshops, watch films or plays, go to art galleries, hang out with pals, go dancing, do things, and you might come across new ideas or thoughts which will inspire you.

Be precise with your words and structure — always ask why.

Speaking of being your own harshest critic, I am also my own harshest editor! For me, the editing stage is where the poem is actually created. That first stage of writing is just me getting my thoughts out.

While I’m editing, I will question absolutely everything. Is this word right, or did I just choose it because I couldn’t be bothered to come up with a better one? I like that line, but does it fit with the poem as a whole? Is this line any good, or did I just include it because it rhymes? Would this poem be more powerful with a different rhyme-scheme or structure?

The edit is basically me doing battle with my own laziness! So I don’t settle for a poem being finished just because I’m tired of working on it.

Aesthetics are no replacement for honesty.

When you’ve been writing for a little while, you learn how to make words sound pretty, to create amazing rhythms or flows. This is a dangerous stage to be at, because it’s very easy to fall into the trap of sacrificing the honesty of your words for aesthetics.

Always question what a line is adding to your poem. If it just… sounds good, then trash it!

And when you’re editing, be careful that you’re not sucking the life out of your poem for the sake of style. There’s a fine line between editing to make your work stronger, and over editing until it sounds clever, but doesn’t mean anything at all.

Page poetry and spoken word are very different beasts — decide which one you’re writing.

When you’re performing poetry, the audience has a lot less time to process it than they would if they were reading it on a page, so it’s good to repeat your point several times in different ways to help it sink in.

There are also far more distractions, so I find it’s better to have a looser and more variable rhythm and rhyme structure so that people are continually entertained, surprised, and pay more attention.

With page poetry, less is always more. You can be economical with your language and less transparent in how you convey your ideas because people are going to be spending more time with it. You can also use a much more regular structure and rhythm if you want to.

Of course, these aren’t hard and fast rules. Any poem can be performed or read and still work. But every poem will always fit much better into one or the other format.

The form is just as important as the words.

I used to turn my nose up at poetic forms. Sonnets, haikus, couplets, they could all go to hell as far as I was concerned. I am a free spirit, a true original. My ideas cannot be constrained.

Thankfully, I’ve since learnt that I’m not better than the likes of Shakespeare and Bashō. And that free and blank verse is totally fine, but if you only think about the words, and don’t think about the form you’re presenting them in, then you’re missing out on half of the tools at your disposal.

You can choose a form that compliments your words — if you’re writing something simplistic, light or humourous that could be an ABAB rhyme. If you’re trying to convey a very specific idea or argument, you could use a sonnet or villanelle structure which both use concluding couplets.

You could use a form that conflicts with your poem, say an ABAB rhyme with quite a melancholy poem. And there’s nothing stopping you from making up your own form.

Subverting a regular form halfway through a poem can also be a very powerful way of indicating a change or unsettling people.

Confessional poetry isn’t necessarily good poetry.

I never write well when I’m feeling angry or upset. Although writing at these times can be very, very cathartic, and sometimes there’s something that can be salvageable in the edit, it can often read more like a pissed off diary entry than anything of artistic value.

Remember that just because an experience is important to you, it won’t necessarily be of interest to anyone else! And the nuts and bolts of your experience aren’t poetry in themselves. The poetry comes from how you frame the experience. How you choose to tell this story and why you’re choosing to tell it. What people will get from the telling.

There is an infinite number of choices you can make when you’re writing, so don’t be content with the first one you think of!

If you don’t vary your tone, your poem gets boring fast.

Let’s be honest, no one wants to read or listen to ten-minutes of earnest solemnity. They will switch off. And that’s not because their attention spans are too short, or they’re not trying hard enough. It’s because if you only hit one tone with your poem, it’s impossible for it to carry any weight.

If you’re constantly sad for example, it won’t read as sad because there’s nothing to compare it to. If, however, you inject some humour, a funny line or two, the sadness can be elevated to tragedy.

Equally, If your poem is just funny, it will begin feeling unrelenting rather than entertaining. So mix it up!

Be careful with allegory and metaphor — they can very easily sound contrived.

It’s so easy to fall back on cliches, that often, I don’t even realise I’m doing it. Yes, the rain outside reflects my sadness. Yes, the leaves falling from the trees represent me moving on. Yes, that dog sleeping over there is the perfect allegory for humankind’s pointless quest for meaning in a meaningless world and we should just be content like that dog is and —

I think the most important thing I’ve learnt is that not everything is about me, and not everything I see is directly relatable to my personal experiences. Especially when it comes to nature.

Instead of thinking this way, think in specifics. Ask yourself what value the comparison you’re making has, how accurate it is. Remain as truthful and precise as you can about what you’re trying to convey and those cliched or forced illusions will soon start looking like what they are, thoughtless and lazy.

Never over-explain your poem.

There is as much, if not more, power in the words you don’t use as the ones you do. The listener or reader should always be given space to work out what’s going on in a poem, what it means, or what it means to them.

If you fully explain what you’re talking about, no matter how profound your idea is, it’ll never stick with people in the same way. It’s like watching a movie that’s all exposition. You get bored, stop thinking, because it’s not asking anything of you.

For me, the trick to avoiding this comes in the edit. When you’re reading your work over you’ll be able to spot the places in which you’re offering too much explanation. I always cut these lines right away. If your poem doesn’t make sense without them, then you’ll know it’s not finished yet.

But never over-complicate it either.

Poetry doesn’t need to be instantly accessible to everyone, in fact, it benefits from being written in a way that it takes a little while to understand.

It shouldn’t be made obscure for the sake of being ‘artistic’ though. In my opinion, this makes the poetry read as elitist, pretentious and cold. This is a thorny subject though. Who am I to say what is willful obscurity, what is elitist, and what is just poetry that’s just a bit more complex and is worth spending more time unpicking?

I don’t have an answer to that. But to avoid unnecessary obscurity in my own work, I always make my language as accessible as it can be within the context of the poem.

Inspiration can’t appear in a vacuum. If all else fails, steal from other people.

I used to (and still do, if I’m honest) get hung up on the idea of originality. What am I offering that’s different? What am I bringing to the table that’s going to add something new to the thousands of poems already published out there?

Questions like can often put me in a stranglehold until I can’t write anything at all. And they’re not helpful! The only question you should be asking yourself with any regularity is, do you enjoy doing this? If the answer’s yes, then keep doing it.

I spent probably a good year in uni writing poems that were basically carbon copies of e.e. cummings poems. I was obsessed. And that’s ok. You shouldn’t be ashamed of copying people for a while! Mimicking can help you learn new ways of writing, and help you understand what exactly it is that you like about that style.

So fuck being original. Steal ideas from as many people you can and your own work will be richer and more interesting for it. Your unique voice, or whatever that is, will come along eventually.

You can write about anything.

Ok, this sounds obvious I know. But I do think it’s still worth saying. I don’t know about you, but when I was in school I found a lot of the poetry we read really uninspiring and dry. I may like it if I read it again now, but as a teenager, all I saw were adults writing obscure, pretentious poems about grand subjects and themes that I had no interest in at all.

For a long while, I thought that poetry had to be this really elevated art form. That every poem had to have an incredibly profound message. And sure, you can write amazing poems about falling in love, heartbreak and all the BIG STUFF. But you can also write amazing poems about sitting at home eating toast. In fact, please do. I’d love to read more poems about that.

You can read my poetry at @poppy.poet on Instagram.