Tips For Writing Your Poetry Collection

So, you're ready to write your Poetry Collection and aren't sure where to start? Not sure what aspects are different than just writing individual poems? Don't worry! I've collected some tips along the way that I am happy to share with you to hopefully give you some pointers to make the most of your poetry collection.

While I would not say I am an expert by any means I do have experience putting together poetry collections for submitting to contests (and once was in the running of top 10 for a chapbook contest!) and have plenty of experience from being an editor for COOP zine. I also have been asked by several YWSers throughout the years for feedback on their collections. So along the way I've picked up some things that I think could be helpful for others!

Overall Philosophy - A Poem of Poems

My single biggest tip or overview for writing your poetry collection is to consider the collection as a "Poem of Poems". This applies to all sorts of aspects of writing your collection! But here's a few particular aspects:

> If you wouldn't vary a particular stylistic tendency within a singular poem, don't do so within the collection, unless there is an intentional reason you are doing so. For instance if I am writing stanza 1 with all capital pronouns, first-person voice, and lots of ocean imagery, I am probably going to continue all those stylistic tendencies in the second stanza, third stanza, and fourth stanza. It would feel disjointed to suddenly start lowercasing all my pronouns, or have stanza 3 be about space-chickens if the others were about water-animals.

> Consider the narrative arc not just of singular poems, but all the poems as one. There should be some sort of sense of "story" or "progression".

> Consider how themes and images connect not just within a singular poem, but again in that poem-of-poems as a whole. If there's a bird in poem 1 that picks up a grain of sand, what if it chases the tide in poem 2. If there's a tree growing in poem 4, what does it have to do with the trees in poem 5, 7, and 8?

In this resource I'm going to cover a few other basic tips, but I'd encourage you if you take nothing else away from this article to think of your poetry collection as a "poem of poems". That's going to help you with continuity, narrative, and voice in so many ways!

Themes & First Drafts

Picking a theme... whether it's for a NaPo collection, a YWS Poetry Folder, or a Poetry Collection can feel like opening a treasure chest of ideas or it can feel suffocating! In my opinion every really good collection will have *some* sort of theme, but choosing a theme too early or too specifically can stifle your creativity before you've even begun! (More on picking poetry themes here )

I would encourage you, keep your theme at first as you start to write pretty general, and then let the poetry help you hone in on the idea. It's a good practice to write a LOT before you try to whittle down your collection, so that you have room to order and choose. Don't be afraid of writing poems that don't quite fit the collection, or that aren't your strongest. Never, and I repeat NEVER, be afraid of writing bad poetry. Writing bad poetry is often how you get to the good poetry, so write as much bad poetry as you can!

Once you start to have some direction with the themes your collection is about, write down notes not just about what sorts of poems you want, but about what you believe your collection is going to mean, in your words, what is it about? Having a summary of sorts of what your collection *means* can help you later in choosing what poems stay or go, how to promote and describe your collection when you submit it, and also how to order your poems. Speaking of order...

Order

Once you've got all the poems you think you're working with you've got the first draft of your poems, but now you need the first draft of your collection. I like to write a one sentence description of each poem and put that on a sticky note with it's title. (ie. "Phonebook Fish - mourning the death of relationship through eco-horror") this will help you in sorting so that you don't have to read 30 poems over and over again while sorting, because you have the one sentence snippet to remind you what it's about.

Now try to order the poems! You might order by a sweeping sort of narrative or story, an inner progression of the speaker's learnings or life, or by a sense of growth or discovery, or you might sort by emotions. This is truly an art in itself, and might seem a little confusing at first. But if you think about the sweeping story your collection tells and then roughly order them within that framework, you will start to see connections and gain even more meaning from your collection.

As a general rule of thumb, (and this is something I picked up from a former Poetry Professor who was also a published poet) it is a good idea (especially if you're considering publishing) to have the first 5 or so poems and final 2 be some of your strongest. Don't hide your best poem 3/4 of the way in. The reason-being, sometimes people evaluating or judging chapbook submissions (for reading or for publishing) only have time in a first-review to read the first and last pieces to get an idea if it fits their vision or standard or not.

Continuity of Voice

A strong collection of poetry will also have a strong sense of voice, but sometimes it can feel a little illusive to work on developing a poetic voice... what does it really mean? Ultimately, developing a poetic voice is very personal, but there are some things you can do that I think help!

First, make sure that your word choice and imagery feels like could all belong in the same realm of being. If you look at this list of words there is one that doesn't belong: celestial, heaven-scape, bird-wing, stretched, wispy, dreamt, citrus, infinity, galaxy. Did you catch it? Citrus! ... All the other words and images live in the same family. As you write think about where the speaker is positioned very generally, how do they view the world, what themes will they return to, what images / motifs / language just don't fit from their voice?

Second, pay as much attention to your continuity of voice in your internal / self-referential descriptions as your physical and outward descriptions. Voice should be consistent across internal and external descriptions.

Lastly, let variety give personality to your voice, rather than contradiction. Don't be afraid to write a few poems in your collection where the voice is markedly different or varied, but if you are making a pointed change, make sure it has purpose!

For more on voice and Finding your Style .

Self-Review

A very important step of a Poetry Collection and of Poetry Publication in general, is the Self-Review, which usually gives birth to the second draft. When you write a poetry collection, it can feel very painful to get rid (or heavily edit) a poem that you worked hard on! Just like it's hard to extract a character out of a novel, the truth is we grow sentimental towards our work and sometimes it is just plain hard to let go of a poem we like. The truth though is a very good poem, can be a poem that is not good for the collection if it doesn't go with the rest of the pieces. A way to get un-sentimental about your poetry is to do a self-review of each poem! Here's what I do:

Put all your poems into one big document! And score each poem in these categories:
* Impact Power (1-5)
* Continuity with rest of the Collection (1-5)
* Poetic Devices (1-5)
* Clarity of Meaning (1-5)

This will give you a good idea of what your strongest poems are and also which poems are just not strong enough for this collection, and either need strong edits, or need to be saved somewhere else for another time. Once you've taken out what doesn't belong, and have done an edit sweep for continuity, I suggest going on to Peer-Review!

Peer-Review

Now, that you've done all that work, it's time to share your collection with a few trusted souls! Find someone you trust to not only give you positive feedback but also critical feedback too! (YWS is great for finding these folks!) I would also suggest asking them specifically to read through your collection in order and then to do the following:

1) Share a paragraph about what you think the collection as a whole *means*. (This can be really revealing!)
2) Share what your 5 favorite poems were!! (with compliments if you love me!)
3) Please please please tell me what your 5 least favorite poems were!! (or 5 you think don't fit in the collection)
4) Any other areas of feedback they're willing to give on specific pieces or the collection as a whole.

These items of feedback will give you a really good idea of if you're on track with the ordering and what poems need serious editing and what poems are your shining stars.

Save It All

Finally, my last suggestion is to SAVE EVERYTHING, YEP, EVEN THAT RANDOM LINE THAT WENT NOWHERE AT 2 AM. The truth is when you write a collection, not everything is going to make it into the collection in the end, that doesn't mean that work was wasted! And you never know what you might use in the future or what lines might just inspire your greatest poem. Save your different drafts as *fresh* documents (do not write over your previous docs!) this is also a good idea when editing poems, save the different versions! This gives you flexibility and allows you to go back if you change your mind.

Concluding Remarks

Okay, you've probably got more than you ever wanted to read from me about Poetry Collections, but lastly, I encourage you to just go for it. Many poets *dream* for years and years of writing a collection and then never do because they don't think they have enough poetry, or enough time, or their voice isn't solid enough. Don't let any of that hold you back! Writing a collection in itself will teach you to write poetry in new ways too. And the more practice you have, the easier it gets. Also, even if you don't end up submitting your poems anywhere, it's really gratifying to feel like you've got a whole collection of work together to share!

Speaking of sharing... share your collections on YWS / WriterFeed! The new publishing center options make it so easy to put a collection together so readers can see your poetry all at once and enjoy it! Also if you ever put together a collection and are looking for a reader, YWS is a great place to find one! I also volunteer myself if I'm around, I have trouble saying no to reading poetry collections, it's truly one of my favorite things to do.



If you have experience writing a poetry collection, tips you've picked up, or questions / comments you'd like to share, please do below!

Bonus Section! How to Review a *Collection* of Poetry

Reviewing a collection of poetry takes just a little extra attention than just reviewing individual poems, here's some tips of things to look at if you're asked to review a collection of poetry!

> Voice - What sense of voice do you get from the poetry collection? Where is there continuity, where is there dissonance between the voice from poem to poem?

> Layers of Meaning - Were there recurring images, phrases, or metaphors that you tracked from poem to poem, how did seeing their progression through the collection communicate meaning or cause confusion?

> Purpose of Order - Does the order create meaning or hinder meaning? Would you change the order in any way?

> Theme - Does the sum of the parts (all the poems together) create a clear sense of meaning? What is that meaning for you as the reader?