How to write a good poem
Begin with an object, not an emotion. Overwrite for fifteen minutes. Find the place where the poem changes its mind. Delete the line that explains the poem. Read it aloud and fix every place your voice stumbles.
Writing Guides
Short, usable instructions. Each guide is a method, not a theory — try one on a draft tonight.
10 poetry writing techniques
Enjambment for momentum. Caesura for hesitation. Anaphora for insistence. Slant rhyme for unease. Volta for honesty. Refrain that shifts meaning. Concrete nouns instead of abstractions. Sound patterning over decoration. A withheld title. An ending that stops rather than concludes.
How to use metaphors
A metaphor should carry information the literal statement cannot. Test it: if you can swap the vehicle for another and lose nothing, the metaphor is decoration. Keep one governing image per short poem, and let it develop rather than pile up.
What is free verse?
Free verse abandons fixed metre, not structure. Its discipline moves to the line break, the sentence, and the shape on the page. Ask of every break: why here? If there is no answer, the poem is prose with ragged edges.
Writing haiku that isn't a syllable exercise
Two images and a cut between them. A seasonal or time anchor. No adjective that tells the reader how to feel. The best haiku are records of perception, not statements about it.
How to revise without killing the poem
Save every draft. Change one variable at a time. Read the earliest and latest versions back to back — the energy often lives in the messy first attempt and the polish has quietly removed it.