• Read lots of poetry. The best way to learn how to write poetry is to read it and to keep your poetry diet as wide and varied as possible. See some of the collections of our past Foyle winners here.
  • Finished poems are often the result of many different drafts. Professional poets will return to a draft of a poem making changes again and again before it is ready to share with other people. So don’t be afraid to make alterations to your poem, you can always change it back again if it doesn’t work out!
  • Always read your poem aloud to yourself once it is finished and ask yourself if there is anything that sounds clunky or out of place.
  • Judges would always rather read one or two of your best poems than a whole book of your work. Select your entries carefully.
  • Think about details! Some big nouns like destiny, infinity and eternity are very hard for your reader to imagine and so they often don’t work very well in poems. You may find you make your poem much stronger by focusing on details which your reader can see and feel.
  • Play around with your tenses! Try writing a draft of your poem where you remove all the “ing” words – walking could be walk or walked. You can always change it back again and you may find you have shaken loose that one line you couldn't get quite right.
  • Make sure your title is pulling its weight. Try choosing a title which tells the reader something they would not know from reading just the poem. Or try taking a line from your poem and turning that into the title. 
  • Try laying your poems out on the page in different ways. Remember that line breaks will change the rhythm of your poem. Think twice before centering your poem as a wobbly left hand margin slows the reader down and turns every line break into a extremely long pause.
  • Do not be afraid of cutting bits that don’t work, a good poem doesn’t have to be a long poem. A poem made of three strong lines is better than a poem with three strong lines and 28 less strong ones. Be absolutely ruthless.
  • Connect with other young writers through the Foyle Young Poets Facebook group.

 

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