How to Format a Book of Poetry.
I was recently asked this question and thought it might be helpful if I addressed it in my weekly blog. There isn’t a hard and fast rule to laying out a book of poetry, but there are a few considerations to consider. Formatting works like sentence structure in that it directs a reader, so genuine care is required when you piece together your book. Not chapter analysis as stringent as a work of fiction, but flow and sequence are fundamental. Even if, like me, your reader opens a book of poetry and reads a single poem at random. Which is something I do all the time. I even use it to help direct my day, my mood, but, importantly, the poem on the next page also receives my attention, and I inevitably end up reading more. You, as the writer, instinctively know which poems are a part of a whole and which poems don’t precisely fit into the time or message of the entire book. The main thing is to keep those unfitting poems out of your central arrangement or create another section specifically for them. Then, it’s a question of placing the poems with the most substantial relationship next to one another until you have some semblance of a storyline. Don’t let your middle sag. Consider how you read a book of poetry. In a bookstore, I read the first two pages and then randomly open to the middle. If all three poems are strong, I buy the book. If the middle poem is weak, but I loved the first poem, I read another central poem and then decide. The bottom line is, you should not have a soft poem in the bunch. Invalid poems are usually the result of people trying to shoehorn an unfitting poem into the book or one solid line into an unfinished poem. Take your time. Some poems take years to write. Begin compiling a chapbook; those poems are one section, then build the entire book out from there. It may end up remaining a chapbook, and that’s okay. Better solid than long. Because you are not writing poetry to create a book, you are writing poetry to document a time or feeling, and so your whole book has to be representative of those initial personal truths.
I hope this is useful!
Wishing you luck and love,
Gret Heffernan
Gret Heffernan is the Editor-in-Chief of Backlash Press and author of The Sculptor and Dark Ansley, Book One and Two.
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