Make Your Poetry Sing

a guide to making your poetry more lyrical

If you are having trouble viewing this content here’s how to fix that.

Poetry is more than just pretty words. It is more than deep thinking. Poetry has a long history with performance and the delivery of pleasing sounds.

Think of the children’s poetry books you may have experienced as a child. Common children’s themes combine with soothing sounds to create an ambiance of silliness or restfulness for a few pleasant moments before bedtime. Satisfying rhymes appeal to young ears and encourage creativity, imagination, and curious play.

It should be the same for adult themes and adult poetry as well. If you cannot read your work aloud and have the words feel like rhythmic music to your ears — then perhaps a few tweaks will help your work to “get there.”

Author sidenote: This article addresses the lyrical quality of poetry — not how to write a lyric poem, which is a specific type of poem.

Read your poem aloud.

I cannot stress this enough. You cannot get a feel for the voice of your poem without doing this. Imagine that your reader is reading it aloud, or that they have a voice playing in their head as they read it.

If you stumble on certain places in your poem while reading it aloud — your reader will as well. Go back and work on those parts of the poem and flesh out the places that feel too short or choppy.

You may want to participate in an Open Mic event in your area. Not only will you get a good feel for listening to the work of others, but taking the mic and reading your poetry out loud to a group of people will be a gift to your work.

Your technique, writing style, and your poetic voice will improve with this very simple practice.

Consider word choice carefully.

Sometimes a word just feels right in our soul and we love it — but it sounds like a blaring horn in the middle of our poem. Get rid of it. Each, and I do mean each word is crucial to a poem and it should roll very smoothly with the poem.

Get out that Thesaurus. Utilize that Poet Assistant App. Select each word based not only on the meaning and overall depth, feel, and connotations, but also for the sound of the word in the poem.

Utilize assonance and alliteration as they can add a lyrical quality to your work.

Alliteration is a noun used for the concept of words starting with the same phonetic sound and these words placed in a row or close together. Alliterate is the verb form of alliteration. (author’s example: luxurious, lacy and liquid — the words beginning with “l” are repeated)

Assonance is the noun used to describe repetitive sounds in words, specifically vowels, which happen at any point in the word. (author’s example: swooning loons and tempting moons — the “oo” sound is repeated) — Grammarist

Be careful with meter.

Meter refers to the syllabic flow of your poem. Think of it as the steady beat to which the music of your poem is set to — an upbeat and downbeat.

For the sake of this brief article I won’t get into iambs, Trochee, and dactyl meters here but a general overview to help you improve your meter.

One trick you can employ to improve your attention to meter: Before you begin reading your poem aloud — set a beat. You may tap your foot or clap your hands to a steady, even beat. Then read your poem to that beat.

You will find places that do not fit the rhythm. Work on these areas, changing up syllables to make the meter more even and the poem fits the tapping of your beat. Keeping a steady internal beat to your poem makes it more enjoyable for the reader — those children’s poetry writers were excellent at this.

Be deliberate with line breaks and punctuation.

Another area to perfect to make your poetry sing is telling the reader where to pause. Brief breaths/pauses are line breaks. Harder stops are marked with punctuation. If you want a total stop — a period.

If you want emphasis on a few words, make them a separate stanza altogether.

You can eliminate most punctuation, if you’d like, and control the movement of the poem with your line breaks. Where you put your line breaks tells the reader to either “pause here” or “continue reading quickly to the next line.

An example: The cat ran away and ate a spoon.

Yes — dumb but you get the point. Utilizing “and” at the end of the line tells the reader to keep reading to the next line. If you can remember to use this tool you can be more careful to not have largely variant line lengths that are distracting to the reader.

Again: The cat ran away and ate a spoon.

There is a space, a breath, a “soft” stop at the end of the line that tells the reader to consider these things separately with a bit of a pause.

Again: The cat ran away. And ate a spoon.

The flow is completely broken into two separate pieces with a full stop between. Now clap out each of the three examples — totally different musical flow. Totally. Even with this silly example you can see how the form can be manipulated to change the rhythm of your poem.

With a little practice of these methods you can make your poetry sound as beautiful as it looks. Adding this dimension can only take your work to the next level. Poetry is meant to sound pleasing both to our ears and within as we read it silently to ourselves. It is part of what makes poetry — poetic!

For more poetry tips:

Thank you Jenny Justice for encouraging me to write this article :)

Christina Ward is an accomplished poet and nature writer from NC. Her work often features lyrical, whimsical, and deeply visual scenes. Follow her work at Fiddleheads & Floss Poetry.

Or Stay in touch! for information of chapbooks and novels as they are released.