Tips for Poetic Form

The ‘Skeleton’ Approach

• Take a poem you like and whose form fits your idea and what you’re trying to express. 
• Break down the poem to its bare skeleton - its structure (line length, stanza length, number of stanzas), metre, rhyme scheme, or any other patterns (anaphora, repetition, ect). 
• Ask yourself: what makes this poem tick? What makes it effective? What it it that you see in this poem that you would like your poem to achieve? 
• Once you have the bare skeleton, build up your own ideas, imagery, words and phrasing on top. 
• Be careful and make sure that the poem at the end is your poem, not the original poet’s. If you’re in any doubt, you can always include an epigraph: ‘after George Mackay Brown’.

The ‘Starting Point’ Approach

• Starting a poem completely independently can be difficult - it’s hard to know where to start. 
• Take a poem whose first few lines you admire - not for subject matter, but for other elements such as person, imagery, impact, structure, metre. Perhaps it suggests a good way of beginning a first-person monologue; perhaps it sets a scene in a pitch-perfect way.
• As with the ‘skeleton’ approach, break down these first lines then build them up again with your own ideas.
• Hopefully this will get you going, so that you can write the rest of the poem independently.

The ‘Style Model’ Approach

• Have a poem you’d like to be influenced by printed out and beside you as you’re working. 
• Write your poem independently, but allow yourself to be influenced by the essence of your style model.
• Perhaps break down/build up small elements if you are really stuck.
• You might find that your poem deviates completely from the style model - allow this to happen, if it is what feels right!

Working independently

• Now rely on your own creativity, using the poetry you’ve read in the past to inform you, but not guide you. You’re taking the stabilisers off!  
• Use your own distinct voice, which will make itself apparent over time and through cultivation. 
• Experiment with form - try modes which reflect your subject matter (eg: personal stories = diaries, murder mystery = police files).
• Most importantly, find what works for you.