Crafting a Small Poetry Collection

How to Select Poems for a Chapbook

Image Courtesy Lolame

Chapbooks are small, but mighty.

As I’m reading the poetry book submissions for Interstellar Flight Press, it occurs to me that a lot of writers struggle to put together poems for a collection. But when the right congregation of poems appears, it’s so exciting as an editor. Poems, when collected, have the ability to speak to each other in new and interesting ways not explored in their individuality.

So how should you select poems for a chapbook?

This article is going to focus on chapbook collections. I will post a separate article later on full-length collections. The only difference between these is page length, but they are two completely separate genres.

I love chapbooks. They’re in some ways the ideal form in which to publish and read poems. You can read 19 poems in a way you can’t sit down and read 60 to 70 pages of poems.

— Robert Morgan

Chapbooks

Selecting poetry for a chapbook very often focuses on theme. But let me back up. What exactly IS a chapbook? Well, it’s a small book of poems. A…