Improving Your Poetry Submission

  • Avoid tautology or repetition in descriptions: eg: ‘Enormous vast emptiness.’
  • Avoid unnecessary descriptors: adjectives and adverbs
  • Discriminate when using definite articles and conjunctions (the, a, an, to, from, if, whether, am, are, is, etc.). Decide whether these words are really needed. Conversely, don’t just cut them all out for the sake of it.
  • Why is this poem being written? What does it have to say? Is this word or line essential to the poem? What about this one? What does it contribute? What is its value? Interrogate every line and word to determine its worth.
  • Go for concision and contraction. Poetry is about distillation. Check the efficiency of your words and lines.
  • Favour active tense over passive: ‘She punched him’ rather than ‘He was punched by her.’
  • Regarding line breaks, especially in free form: are you making best use of them to have an effect, or are they just arbitrary? Line breaks are crucial.
  • Wherever possible, avoid the word ‘like’ when using similes. Find ways around it. Instead of saying ‘Eyes like headlights’ try variants, like ‘eyes bright as headlights’ or ‘headlight eyes’ or ‘eyes shining headlight-bright’. ‘Like’ is the most overused, therefore boring, word in poetry.
  • Try to avoid ‘I’, ‘me’ and ‘my’. They make poems seem self-indulgent. Consider writing in second or third person, see if it fits your poem. Even if writing in the first person, use the aforementioned words as little as possible.
  • Work on your endings. These are the most important part – the part that ties up the poem and the part that stays longest with the reader. Make your endings as strong as possible.
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