How to write poetry like Shakespeare in eleven simple steps
Come, break the paragon of pride,
Unleash the genius inside!
How to Write Poetry – Introduction
Many people can learn how to write a poem. The question is: why would they?
Danil Rudoy
The soul is overwhelmed with emotion, the feelings are stirring inside, looking for an easy way out… Freeze, the moment, you are beautiful: here and now, a poem could be born. For poets, these are the most cherished moments of inspiration when thoughts storm onto paper on their own and rhymes come to mind effortlessly, and yet those moments are not reserved for poets alone!
Do you want to experience the miracle of poetry yourself? Did you already try something, or everything, all to no avail as words slip away still, the rhyme is not there, thoughts dissipate, and the final draft looks like anything except what you wanted to say? In that case, you also came to the right place!
It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been writing poems and how gifted you are as a poet. Writing poetry is a skill that can be learned, much like reading, and how well you do it depends on your perseverance more than anything else. And if you are still serious about embarking on a journey into the wondrous land of how to write poetry, here are 11 handy tips that can help you along the way.
How to Write Poetry – a Beginner’s Guide
We’ll touch on the following topics instrumental in learning how to write poetry:
- What you should know about the meter,
- How to enlarge your vocabulary,
- How to use your imagination,
- How to rhyme correctly,
- And so much more.
These tips are for aspiring poets intending both to learn how to write poetry better and how to write better poetry, too.
Master the poetic meters
Poetic meter organizes rhythm through recurring patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables. English verse often works with feet such as iambs, trochees, anapests, and dactyls; iambic pentameter remains one of the most influential patterns in English poetry. Formal verse gains power from control of rhythm, while free verse develops rhythm through lineation, syntax, cadence, repetition, and sound. Studying meter gives any poet a sharper ear, even when a finished poem follows no regular metrical scheme.
When learning meter, listen first for the poem’s rhythmic movement. Scan lines deliberately at the beginning, then read them aloud until the pattern becomes audible without constant counting. With practice, meter becomes a compositional resource: you can sustain it, vary it, or break it at a meaningful moment while keeping the line natural in the mouth.
Use rhetorical devices
Think about it: how can someone learn how to write poetry if she doesn’t know what tools to use? Rhetorical devices (sometimes referred to as tropes) are these literary tools, and you should know all of them, not just such popular ones. Everyone knows about metaphor and simile, but will you be able to tell apart metanoia and hypophora, or notice when your favorite poet uses aporia?
It is best to study rhetorical devices directly from the best poets as you read their works. If you develop the habit of noticing the tropes and figures of speech they use, employing those in your own poetry will become your second nature. And the poems themselves will reach a whole new level of meaning and expressiveness, revealing to the audience the very notes and accents you wanted to convey.
Broaden your vocabulary
While rhetoric devices are necessary to make a dramatic impact and steer the reader in the right direction, words are your primary tool and the key weapon because it is through them that poets speak. And those who speak well also know a thing or two of how to write a good poem. The more shades of meaning you can distinguish and pin down with precision, the more ground is open to you, and opportunities to turn words into good poetry will occur seemingly on their own.
Reading more than you thought was possible will help enrich your vocabulary; you’ll also use better grammar in speech and writing. Try this trick: open a dictionary on a random page and make sure you know every word on it. And never hesitate to ask about the words you don’t get: a subtle colloquialism can be the best choice for the key moment.
Memorize your favorite poems
The more good poetry you read, the more readily you hear rhythm, cadence, syntax, and the pressure of a line break. Take that practice further and learn poems you admire by heart. Memorization lets phrasing, sound, and structure become part of your working ear. This exercise will expand your poetic horizons, making your work more varied and richer in connotations.
Just remember to read poets from different eras (from Ancient Greek odes to modern rap), to get acquainted with renowned masters and new authors alike. Your goal is to become so versatile in poetry that, no matter what creative task you are up against, your memory will already have examples of how other poets tackled it successfully. And, in addition to making it easier for you to write your own poetry, learning poems by heart furnishes you with some brilliant poetic quotes, which sometimes comes in handy, especially in fine society.
Summon all your deepest feelings
Without feelings, poems are dry foliage with little or no value to anybody but you (unless you are one of the commercial poets who get paid to write poetry). That’s why to write better poetry you need to elevate your feelings to an extreme. It’s not as extreme as it sounds, and for a daring heart learning how to write poetry this task is but a piece of cake.
Start with what you care about the most, even if that means writing a poem about love. If you try to restore a past picture or experience from memory, try to recreate everything as accurately as possible. Fill yourself with the gone anew, and the next poem will bear a magic touch of witty vividness.
Poetry first and foremost, always, everywhere!
This should be your motto because the more poetry you write, the easier it becomes, and the better you get. Don’t worry if not all the poems come out the way you want: remember, even bad poems sometimes have good parts that can be salvaged and reused more successfully. The key is to form and temper the discipline that will force you to grab the pen (or keyboard) in any situation propitious to writing poetry.
Challenge your literacy
In poems, it is very difficult to replace an inappropriate word with another one as this usually breaks the meter (and sometimes the rhyme). So, if you don’t know the right word, most likely you won’t be able to write what you want the way you conceptualized it. What you need to do in order to learn how to write poetry is bridge the literacy gap in the poetic traditions you work in, whether you are writing comic verse, dramatic monologue, sonnets, elegies, or intimate lyric poetry.
This means that, if your poem describes the interior of a submarine, you are as spot-on describing the details as any soldier or officer on that submarine would be, using arcane terms interchangeably with everyday ones for maximum effect. As you work on acquiring all that vocabulary, pay close attention to spelling, punctuation, and, above all, grammar. Strictly speaking, you should be able to turn any written text into a source of interest, especially if it belongs to the classics: then the works of contemporary authors and poets will turn into a playground while your own poems blossom with the colors you didn’t expect they’d have.
Augment your poetic imagination
How will love at first sight strike? What associations does a thundercloud bring? Who is the owner of the car parked by the side of the road? A poet’s imagination grows by turning ordinary perceptions into precise situations, voices, images, and conflicts.
The more unusual stuff you’ll notice in the mundane (especially in the things no one pays attention to), the more high-quality, catchy, and unique imagery you can concentrate in your poems. This skill is often wanting in would-be poets, but if you take this challenge seriously you will learn how to write great poetry on the subtlest clues from the world around you.
Rhyme thee well
English offers a wide range of rhyme possibilities, from full rhyme to slant rhyme, consonance, and repeated vowel sounds. If rhyme belongs in the poem, make sure it earns its place through sound and meaning. A rhyme dictionary can widen the field of possibilities, while the final choice should still serve the sentence, image, and tone.
A good tactic for beginners learning how to write poetry is to:
- Carefully look at all the possible rhymes for the keyword,
- Select the one that fits the poem best, and
- Invent a sentence that will meaningfully feature this rhyme.
Rhyme works best when its musical effect and semantic pressure reinforce each other. A memorable rhyme should feel inevitable in retrospect while still allowing the language to sound alive.
Write like nobody listens
Periods of grief, exhaustion, anxiety, or depression can make writing difficult. Poetry may offer a form for attention, memory, anger, tenderness, or confusion, yet a poem carries no obligation to cure the life around it. Write when writing is possible, protect your health, and give difficult experience the degree of distance the work itself requires.
Personal material often becomes stronger after revision. A first draft can preserve the emotional charge; later drafts can test image, rhythm, line breaks, syntax, and proportion until the poem can stand independently for a reader.
Write a poem about yourself (or someone else)
How to write a poem about yourself should not even be a question. If you are (1) learning how to write poetry, and (2) yourself, adding up these two and writing a poem about yourself is the first and the most natural thing to think of and do.
Begin with anything you want, it doesn’t matter if it’s the clothes you wear or a fleeting feeling experienced once in a lifetime at an exotic location: you just need to establish a connection with the source that may or may not teach you how to write poetry, and when that happens you won’t need to read about it online anymore.
If direct self-portraiture feels too exposed or too vague, choose a smaller angle: a habit, a room, an object you keep, a recurring fear, a gesture, or one remembered scene. Specificity gives the poem something concrete to test against the larger idea of the self.
Well, if that is truly the case, write a poem about someone else, a person you know or don’t know, but absolutely do have a stronger-than-normal emotional reaction to. People are usually the easiest: other things just don’t bother us so much. Oh, and when you’re done, don’t forget to post your work in the comments section below.
How to Write a Poetry Book
A poetry book needs an architecture that individual poems can enter. Begin by gathering a manuscript larger than the book you expect to publish. Read the poems side by side and identify the recurring pressures: voice, desire, place, memory, comic energy, grief, argument, form, or a repeated dramatic situation.
Then build sequences. The opening poem establishes the terms of attention. Section endings create pauses or reversals. Repeated images can acquire new meanings when they return. Strong ordering makes neighboring poems illuminate one another while preserving their independence.
Revision at book scale differs from revising a single poem. Remove pieces that repeat an effect already achieved more sharply elsewhere. Test whether long poems and short poems create useful changes of pace. Read the manuscript aloud to hear clusters of identical rhythm or diction. Check titles, epigraphs, section names, and the final poem as parts of the same composition.
Danil Rudoy’s Love Is Poetry: Rhyming Poems About Love Life offers one example of book-scale sequencing in contemporary rhymed verse. Its five larger movements organize poems around courtship, the muse, artistic vocation, darkness, and renewal. Whatever form your own work takes, the useful lesson is structural: a collection becomes memorable when its poems create cumulative pressure across the whole book.
Before publication, prepare a clean manuscript, standardize typography, verify poem titles and ordering, and ask trusted readers to judge the sequence as a complete work. A poetry book should reward both continuous reading and the return to a single poem.
How to Write Poetry – In Conclusion
How to write poetry is a question best answered by sustained reading, attentive practice, and revision. Write frequently enough to discover recurring strengths and weaknesses, then return to drafts with enough distance to hear what the poem actually does on the page.
How to write a poetry book: from individual poems to a finished manuscript
Things to write poems about & types of poems to write
When the skill of how to write poetry is already mastered, novice poets often wonder what to write poems about. That depends on your imagination: you can write song lyrics, passionate dedications, Birthday cards, etc. Don’t be afraid to pull yourself in different directions: there is always something nice, witty, and funny to say to friends and family, and even to a stranger if you so desire.
Furthermore, a beautiful poem of your own making is a precious gift to be remembered by those to whom you dedicated it. Just follow the how to write poetry tips above and your poetic muscle will begin to grow. Oh, by the way, if you haven’t already guessed, good topics to write poems about include the moon, the spring, and eternal love.
Good luck!