How to Write a Poem in 5 Steps

What Makes a Poem a Poem?
How to Write a Poem for Beginners in 5 Steps
Tips on Writing Poetry
Poem Format Examples
How ProWritingAid Can Help You With Writing Poetry

Poetry is one of the most beautiful written forms of expression. For those who want to write poetry, it’s not clear where you should start.

Good poetry is written with care and attention to the language used. Poets use fundamental elements of poetry, such as theme, form, and imagery, to create written masterpieces.

In this article, you’ll learn how to write a poem with some tips to take you beyond a beginner. We’ve even got some examples so you can see how beautiful poetry can be.

What Makes a Poem a Poem?

A poem is a piece of writing used to express emotions, memories, and opinions about a specific theme or subject. Most poets write about things they’re passionate about and use their poem to tell a story about the subject.

You might think poems have to include rhyme, and many of them do, but it’s not essential. The focus on form, rhythm, and imagery is often more important.

Poems draw our attention to something specific, usually something we don’t generally think about in our everyday lives. For example, you might read a poem written from the perspective of a grandfather clock, which represents the passing of time, while it sits there watching us grow up around it.

How to Write a Poem for Beginners in 5 Steps

There’s more to poetry than just rhyming words, but it’s easy to get started. Here are five easy-to-follow steps for writing a poem.

What to Write a Poem About

The first thing you need to do is decide what the theme of your poem will be. The theme is the overall meaning or message of the poem, which your readers will find when they read between the lines.

To get ideas for what your theme could be, think of the things you care deeply about or something that fascinates you, and pick something you can work on.

If you’re not sure what themes you can choose from, here is a short list of examples:

Love
War
Poverty
Life
Time
Beauty
Hardships
Space

Once you’ve picked your theme, start planning the subject of your poem. The subject is like a main character; it represents the theme throughout the poem. In our previous example, the grandfather clock was the subject, but the theme of the poem was time.

What Poetic Form Will You Use?

Poetic forms are templates, which have rigid rules on how to structure a poem. Before we go into detail about poetic forms, here are some key terms and definitions you need to know.

Verse: a verse is the name for a single line in a poem. This can also describe an entire section of a poem, so most people just use the term “line” instead of “verse.”

Stanza: a stanza is a grouping of lines in a poem.

Rhyme: a rhyme is when two words sound the same or similar. There are many rhyme types. For example, a perfect rhyme is when the words sound alike. When discussing rhyming schemes in poems, poets use letters, such as a, b, c, to refer to the rhymes.

Meter: a meter is the rhythmic element of words or lines in a poem. A meter comprises syllables that are stressed or unstressed. There are several meters used within poetry. A well-known example is an iamb, which is made up of two syllables; unstressed, then stressed.

Rhythm: the rhythm is the structure of meters used within the poem. William Shakespeare favored the iambic pentameter rhythmic structure. It comprises five iambs, which are ten syllables following the unstressed-then-stressed rhythm.

You can identify poetic forms by their rhyming structures, rhythms, and specific details about the way they arrange the lines within the poem.

If you don’t want to follow rules on how to write your poem, you could write a free verse poem instead. It is simply poetry that doesn’t fit into a specific poetic form. You’re still welcome to use rhyme schemes or rhythmic structures seen in other forms.

How to Start a Poem

All good poems start with a memorable first line. Your first impression is where you pique the reader’s interest.

In some poetic forms, the first line is the same as the last line, which creates a mirror effect. Alternatively, you might write a poem that follows a story in which the subject drastically changes from the opening line to the last.

In poetry, your first line doesn’t need to be a complete sentence or point. Poets often use a technique called enjambment, where the sentence spills over more than one line. You end up with sentence fragments that only make sense when read together, but they work with the flow of the poem.

Will You Use Any Literary Devices?

Poets are masters at employing literary devices within their poems. The primary device they use is imagery. Poems don’t tell stories; they show them unfolding from the eye of the subject or narrator. You can use concrete sensory details to create images in your reader’s mind.

Poets regularly use metaphors in poetry. Metaphors are figures of speech that refer to something as though it is something else. For example, “The girl was a shining star.” You can also extend a metaphor throughout your poem by building on your initial metaphor with figurative language and descriptions to represent the theme.

Personification, which is applying human characteristics to something nonhuman, is another key literary device used by poets. For example, you could give an inanimate object eyes to watch our world from and wonder what that object would see daily.

One thing that makes a poem stand out is how it sounds, so it’s no surprise poets use devices like alliteration and onomatopoeia. Alliteration is when the first letters of consecutive words are the same or create a similar sound. Onomatopoeia is using words that are written to sound the same when spoken out loud, such as pop or bang.

Edit Your Poem

Once you’ve written the first draft of your poem, you’re going to need to edit it. Raw, unedited poetry can sound great, but editing poems often lifts them to a whole new level.

You need to meticulously select each word and syllable sound in your poems to ensure you’re creating the right meaning. If you’re using metaphors, you don’t want your reader to miss the theme you’re representing.

If you’re not sure where to start with editing your poetry, try some editing software for your first edit. You might notice some places where the rhythm is off, or you might find a synonym that fixes the rhyming scheme you were aiming for.

Tips on Writing Poetry

Here are five top tips for going beyond the basics we just learned and trying some different techniques to write poetry.

Tip 1: Use Your Own Experiences for Inspiration

The best place to find inspiration for your poetry is from your own life experiences. Letting your emotions and memories flow into your writing will make it sound authentic.

If you lack inspiration, go out and do something you enjoy, or better still, try something new. Alternatively, think of a time in your life that relates to the theme you want to write about.

Tip 2: Experiment With Rhyming

Most people will be familiar with perfect rhymes, as they’re used in song lyrics and popular poems. However, you can try using imperfect rhymes where only a consonant sound or a vowel sound is the same between two words.

The best way to develop a better ear for rhyming is by reading many poems and stories. Develop your vocabulary, and you’ll find it easier to come up with original-sounding rhymes in your poems. Alternatively, if you’re still struggling with rhymes, try using a rhyming dictionary.

Tip 3: Rearrange Your Lines

You might start off following a specific poetic form, but don’t let that hold you back. Sometimes it’s fun to write your poem using one form, then try rewriting it but with the lines rearranged. Can you produce the same meaning in a more interesting way?

Tip 4: Try Making a Poetry Collection

Poetry collections are a great way to practice the art of writing poems. Practice is what will make you a better poet. You could even publish your collection once it’s finished.

Pick a specific theme for your collection, and write as many poems about it as you can. Play with different literary devices, and explore the many ways you can present that theme to your reader.

Tip 5: Attend Poetry Readings

Listening to other poets reading their work is a great way to appreciate the beauty of poetry. You’ll also find a very warm, welcoming community of writers who have a lot of passion for what they’re writing. You might hear something amazing that inspires your own poetry writing.

Poem Format Examples

Now that you’re more familiar with the elements of poetry and how to write a poem, here are some examples of poetic forms.

Haiku: “Over the Wintry” by Natsume Soseki

Over the wintry

forest, winds howl in rage

with no leaves to blow.

A haiku is a short poem that originates in Japanese traditions and has become popular, as it is a simple form to teach children. The rules of a haiku are 17 syllables over three lines following a structure of five, seven, five. Haiku often focus on seasons and nature.

Sonnet 18: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” by William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;

Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

The sonnet is a poetic form that originated in Italy before becoming popular in English poetry in the sixteenth century. It’s made up of 14 lines, using an iambic pentameter, and the rhyme scheme differs depending on what type of sonnet you’re looking at. A Shakespearean sonnet uses the rhyme scheme: a, b, a, b, c, d, c, d, e, f, e, f, g, g.

Limerick: “There was an Old Man with a Beard” by Edward Lear

There was an Old Man with a beard,

Who said, “It is just as I feared!—

Two Owls and a Hen,

Four Larks and a Wren,

Have all built their nests in my beard.”

Limericks are a poetic form you may be familiar with, as they are often humorous poems. They follow a structure of five lines, with a rhyme scheme of a,a,b,b,a, and an anapestic meter, which is three syllables of two unstressed syllables and then one stressed syllable.

How ProWritingAid Can Help You With Writing Poetry

When you’re in the editing stage of your writing process, you can use ProWritingAid to point out areas for improvement. There are two key reports you’ll find useful for editing poetry, and those are the Thesaurus report and the Sensory report.

You can use the thesaurus check to see how many verbs, adjectives, nouns, and adverbs you’ve used. You can also use it to check for synonyms if you have any weak words in your poem you want to improve.

The Sensory report will check your descriptions and tell you how many sensory details you’re using in your poem. If you’re not getting many results, your poem might lack detail or feature too much abstract description. Try adding some more concrete words, and run the report again.

Using the steps in this article, why don’t you try writing a poem today? Then you can test out ProWritingAid to edit your poem.