When writing a poem, should you start with the verses or the chorus?
The muse will guide you as to this. Sometimes you can even start with a sunset. Other times you might have a word or phrase rattling around in your head and it is worth writing it down.
NB: You should check in this case that it isn’t actually someone talking to you. Like, did you actually properly leave that last Zoom ‘‘meeting’’.
NNB: Muses and sunsets are often overrated in poems. You can start with a wheelbarrow, or plums. Though those have been quite famously overused too.
All the Ns and a B: on a technical point, I think if we’re going to be snobby about this, you’re not supposed to talk about verses and choruses, but stanzas. Because verses and choruses are for songs.
How many verses should there be and in what order?
OK, verses it is then. In terms of how many, the easiest is to go free form. Then you can start whenever you like and finish only after everyone else has stopped listening.
If you want to get all formal and enter the world of poems with rules (which I find is an excellent and disciplined game in organising my freeformness of thought), then for a sonnet, one. A villanelle, six, I think. A sestina, six as well. But a different six. And then an envoy. A ghazal, five to fifteen and typically, seven. A ballad or an epic, loads.
As for the order, always start after you think you need to and finish before you think it’s the end.
How many lines per verse and is ABAB best?
For a sonnet, 14. For a villanelle, three, except four in the sixth. A sestina, six for the six and three for the envoy. Ghazals are couplets. There are a few ways to skin a ballad but for the purposes of today, let’s go with quatrains because it is such a satisfying word to say. Epics just go on and on.
As far as the ABAB of things goes, I’m as susceptible to a good, juicy ABAB ballad as the rest of us, but you should know that Serious Poetry Doesn’t Rhyme, Obviously. Or do I mean that Serious Poetry Doesn’t Rhyme Obviously?
Are internal rhymes regarded as more clever than end rhymes?
Oh, definitely. In 2001, Giles Foden wrote a piece in The Guardian comparing Eminem to Robert Browning and T.S. Eliot. Yes, he did reference their shared, dreadful misogyny, but mostly, it’s a close reading of the brilliance of Eminem’s internal rhyme structure, and worth looking up, if only for the lols of earnest literary deconstruction of "the real Slim Shady".
What is iambic pentameter? Is it essential?
OK, there’s a couple of ways we can do this. Maybe more. Probably more. Let’s start with this one ... If you have a standard pair of hands available, iambic pentameter is that number of fingers and thumbs. Work in from the left hand side of the left hand, with your palms facing away from you. Your little finger, middle finger and thumb on your left hand and your pointer finger and ring finger on the right hand are unstressed syllables. Your ring finger and pointer finger or your left hand and your thumb, middle finger and pinkie on the right hand are stressed syllables. So, if you play a line of iambic pentameter like a table top piano, it goes deDUM deDUM deDUM deDUM deDUM.
An iamb is a deDUM and pentameter means there are five of them in a line. Like my MIStress’ EYES are NOthing LIKE the SUN (Shakespeare), or he WANTS to BE Luke SKYwalKER at SCHOOL (me).
NB. Good on Shakespeare for apparently writing King Lear in a pandemic but also, even if he is really who he says he is, WHATEVER, they didn’t have the internet then. No back-catalogue of shows to re-binge-watch. So no wonder they had time and energy for iambic pentameter. Which is not essential, no. But it is the essence of a surprising amount of goodness.
And it it is very satisfying when you do get into the rhythm of it. I have been know, in poem workshops, to get students to gallop the iambs they’ve written around the room. Which IS more fun than trying to get to the end of the TV version of The Haunting of Hill House, if I’m honest. Because the book was so much better.
Should I read some poetry first, and if so, which greeting cards are the best?
Here’s the thing though. Weddings, funerals, pandemics — any time we’re struggling to put emotions into words, poems come into their own. Whether you’re writing or reading them. If you run out of greetings cards, and you’re looking for other sources, some of the poets I’ve had the time to read or listen to this week, on and offline, are Dominic Hoey, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Jane Yeh, Kate Bodger, Tusiata Avia, Hinemoana Baker, Laura Williamson, Tarfia Faizullah, Carolyn McCurdie, Jo Bell, Iona Winter, Edna St Vincent Millay, Alison Glenny, Michele Leggott, Kate Tempest, Chris Tse, Ursula Robinson Shaw, Tayi Tibble, C.P. Cafavy, Annabel Wilson, Claire Lacey, Sue Wootton, Tracey Slaughter, Wisława Szymborska, Sam Hunt, Maria Jastrzebska, Catherine Ayres, Eileen Myles, Carol Ann Duffy and Melanie McKercher and that’s before I get through all the daily poems that come through from those poem-a-day websites that I make myself read before deleting because even if I don’t love them as much as I love a tidy inbox, a good poem is a kind of truth and I like hearing people’s truths.
Should I use metaphor, or is that a slippery slope?
Yes. Overuse it. Mix it. Drink it dry with a twist of lemon and your best foot forward in a unicorn rubber ring and enjoy the slide.
What about similes, or are they like clowns at a wake?
I am really very scared of clowns and I’m not sure why. Maybe I will investigate that fear in a sestina, so I can have line endings of "clown", "fright", "lips", "ruff", "master" and "wide" in a nightmare sequence to the rhythm of one of those organ grinders in the echo of a polyvinyl arena. Which might make it an extended metaphor. But those are on point.
Is it OK to use a thesaurus? Like, if you need a word that means drain but has to rhyme with hill?
Yes. But what is this word? Spill? Swill? Distil? Espadrille? Daffodil? Living will? Pneumatic drill? Sanitary landfill? Back up the truck (points for metaphor) — why does it have to rhyme? Are you not trying to be a Serious Poet? Overkill?
Are there words best avoided (that have been used a bit much)?
It’s best to avoid overusing abstract nouns. Unless you’re Robert Frost, don’t go around writing things like "Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired." As a sweeping generalisation, it is far less yawnsome / more interesting to read / write specifics. Consider the following:
Love makes me feel happy.
Her hands in mine, a protected circuit.
When his tail wags, and his eyes fixate on the driftwood, I feel like, I’ve got this. I’ve got this.
Also, avoid overusing lovely, lovely adjectives, no matter what you were told at high school. Also, and this one is crucial. Never use the word "moist". Not in a poem. Not anywhere. Not ever.
Some poems include words that have been made up (see "slithy toves"). Is that OK if nothing else will rhyme?
All words were made up at some point. And sometimes there isn’t an existing word that will do. Often, in fact, I find. So, yes. And you can make up the grammar and the syntax too. Poems are permission to play. The important thing is that the sounds and the order of the sounds and the look of the sounds on the page and/or the sound of the sounds aloud make their own sense/nonsense as a whole in the world of the poem.
Does it matter if no-one gets it?
Yes, and no. Poet Adrian Henri, quoting poet Adrian Mitchell, once said "Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people". If you want to check whether other people get it, you’ll have to be willing to share. Read it to a friend on the phone, send it away to a literary journal or upload it to one of the Octagon Collective’s Virtual Poetry Nights.
Important note: if you’re expecting people to listen to you, please remember to return the favour. I know it’s not you who was that person who came to that one open mike that one time I was feature reader and left after you’d done your own poem and didn’t stick around to listen to anyone else. And it’s not like I’ve still got baggage about that. I’m just saying.
Does it matter if other people get it?
Is this the same question but with a subtly, poetically different slant? Is it for someone specific? Share it. If they don’t get it, or don’t return your irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired, oh well. Heartbreak is an excellent source of poetry too.
What is a pass mark?
If you’re professionally poeting, it is too easy to get caught up in an acceptance/rejection cycle. It is waaaaaay too easy to lull yourself into a false sense of insecurity. The fact is, writing and reading poems is an addiction, a favourite waste of time, a bottomless wellspring of #inspirational activity, always waiting to bloom into your very soul and out again, in couplets, in quatrains, in the very epic-ness of being.
But, here’s the hard truth. If you’re not writing King Lear, the Sequel: Cordelia Raises Her Zombie Army, right now, in perfect iambic pentameter then frankly, you’re looking squarely at an Underacheived.
- Liz Breslin was recently in Krakow, Poland, on a Unesco Cities of Literature writer’s residency. Her most recent collection of poetry was Alzheimer’s and a spoon.
