How to Write a Poem

Front Cover
John Wiley & Sons, Feb 9, 2009 - Education - 176 pages
An innovative introduction to writing poetry designed for students of creative writing and budding poets alike.
  • Challenges the reader’s sense of what is possible in a poem.
  • Traces the history and highlights the potential of poetry.
  • Focuses on the fundamental principles of poetic construction, such as: Who is speaking? Who are they speaking to? Why does their speaking take this form?
  • Considers both experimental and mainstream approaches to contemporary poetry.
  • Consists of fourteen chapters, making it suitable for use over one semester.
  • Encourages readers to experiment with their poetry.
 

Selected pages

Contents

Introduction
1
1 The Question of Address
17
2 Viewpoint
26
3 The Question of Voices
36
4 The Question of Scale
47
5 Uses of Repetition
56
6 Image
65
7 Short Lines
73
9 Diction
92
10 Uses of Syntax
100
11 Ton e
108
Ode
115
Epistle
124
14 The Question of Background
134
The Question of Variety
143
Index
150

8 Long Lines
86
Copyright

Other editions - View all

How to Write a Poem
John Redmond
No preview available - 2005
How to Write a Poem
John Redmond
No preview available - 2005
How to Write a Poem
John Redmond
No preview available - 2009
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Common terms and phrases

anapaestic Bloodaxe Brutus C. D. Wright C. H. Sisson C. K. Williams Caesar Carcanet chapter Collected Poems context contrast conversation convey Copyright creates dramatic effect example experience feel flowers Frost give Graham’s poem Hardy Hardy’s hear human iambic imagine Jorie Graham kind language line-break live long lines Longley look main verb meaning Michael Longley mind Miroslav Holub narrator number pi opening pattern Perhaps person phrase play poem’s poetic question reader relationship repetition Reprinted by permission rhythm Seamus Heaney seems Selected Poems London sense sentence shadow short lines short-line poems sound speaker speech stanza stressed structure suggest syntax Szymborska T. E. Hulme things thinking about poetry thought tion tone unstressed syllables verse-letter viewpoint voice W. B. Yeats W. H. Auden W. S. Graham Whitman wind Wislawa Szymborska word-choices words write a poem

About the author (2009)

John Redmond is the author of one collection of poems, Thumb’s Width (2001), which was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, and he features as one of ‘The New Irish Poets’ in a Bloodaxe anthology of that name. He was previously Assistant Editor of the long-running poetry magazine Thumbscrew, and writes reviews on a regular basis for the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian and Poetry Review. He is Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Liverpool and, previously, was Visiting Assistant Professor at Macalester College in St Paul, Minnesota.

Bibliographic information

TitleHow to Write a Poem
How to Study Literature
AuthorJohn Redmond
PublisherJohn Wiley & Sons, 2009
ISBN1405148756, 9781405148757
Length176 pages
Subjects ›  ›  › 

Education / General
Education / Teaching / Subjects / Reading & Phonics
  
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