10 Terrible Tips For Writing Bad Poetry  

Perfection in poetry is impossible to attain – so let’s go for the opposite. Let’s write really bad poetry. That way, you know what to avoid! Here are 10 tips on how to do it (and have some fun).

10 Terrible Tips For Writing Bad Poetry  

The poets we read in school are all good, everybody knows what great poetry is. But can you tell what exactly makes good poetry? Almost impossible, right? In this post, we’ll do some reverse logic. It’s much easier to define what truly bad poetry is. We’ll also have a tongue-in-cheek look at how to write it. And yes, there will be examples from a notoriously bad poet.

What Is Bad Poetry?

The short answer is that it’s the opposite of good poetry.

If good poetry has lots of standards, then bad poetry must ignore them. Good poetry is all about making conscious choices about format and genre (here is a whole series of blogs about the kinds of poems), subject matter, diction, rhythm and other acoustic elements. To write bad poetry, a writer takes a haphazard idea, and unfolds the subject matter in the most obvious way, leaving no room for interpretation.

What about the language? This is where it gets harder. Let’s look at it in more detail and turn it into some hands-on advice.

10 Tips For Writing Bad Poetry

1. Choose a haphazard subject matter. Explore it on a very literal level.

What’s important is that you leave the imagination of your reader no wiggle room. Tell them exactly what you mean and how you mean it. This is the one opportunity to use large amounts of telling.

Let’s say, you describe the incident of a father doing the dishes. You describe the man and the way he scrubs the pots and pans. You go on to say that he does that every day. Seems rather boring? Right.

2. Avoid all metaphorical meanings.

A good poet might turn our example about washing the dishes into a metaphor of how daily chores bear witness to the necessities of life, and how they provide structure to our lives structure. A bad poet will avoid this at all costs. Remember, bad poetry defies all interpretation.

3. Ignore any acoustic qualities of the poem.

That means you ignore rhyme, assonance, and alliteration (unsure about these words? Here’s a post to help you). Refrain from any internal rhyme. Make sure the lines of your poem all have different lengths and that the stresses don’t create any rhythm whatsoever. That’s rather hard! If you can’t do it, then please proceed to the next point.

4. Get into a rhythmic trance.

Create a chain of rhymes that go along with your subject matter and simply stick these words in wherever you like. If the original word itself is repeated within these rhyme words, all the better!

If we go back to our original idea about a father doing dishes, then these are the keywords you need to use, together with some of the rhyming words:

water:         daughter, hotter, slaughter, wastewater, salt water, meltwater

dish:           fish, squish, swish, wish

father:        grandfather, bother, lather, dishwasher

5. Avoid any metre.

The easiest way to do this is to vary each line in length, Never ever read your poem aloud. That may point you to flaws and then you will strive to improve your poem. So, don’t. A truly bad poem needs to sound jumbled up. There’s even a fancy word for this. It’s called a doggerel. We’ll look at examples later.

6. Avoid evocative words.

Any word becomes evocative if used out of register, or if it has more than one meaning (here’s some advice on figurative language). If words can be understood on a symbolic level, then they are taboo for bad poetry. The simpler the language the better. No metaphors or symbols are allowed.

7. Weak verbs, weak modifiers.

A bad poem should avoid deep meaning, and the best way to do it is to use simple verbs. But you wouldn’t want to be boring. Pepper your very bad poem with many weak modifiers!

For example, you could write that this father scrubs the plates. But that’s already conjuring up an image. How about writing “he washes them with repeated movements”? That’s bad, isn’t it? Wonderful!

8. Be very literal.

Don’t leave anything up to the readers’ imagination. After all, it’s your poem, right? So, tell your readers exactly what’s happening. Don’t leave any wiggle room for interpretation. That father is washing the plates and that’s that.

9. Throw in some worn-out clichés.

They’re tried and tested, after all! Very popular are the clichés about gender roles, or cultural stereotypes. Racist stereotypes can be used as well. They’re a surefire way to get lots of hate mail. Such is the way of bad poetry.

In our example, the father might think his wife used to be in the kitchen, and that this was the natural order. Of course, he sees himself as a hands-on dad. But since his divorce, his life has turned pear-shaped. Thankfully the boys are members of the clean-plate club, so there isn’t much cleaning to do, anyway. Can you spot all the clichés?

10. Avoid getting to the heart of things.

Poetry needs to be long and reading it needs to be on the verge of being painful. That way you’ll create a lasting impression. You can enhance this impression by always beating about the bush.

For our example, you’d have to write a poem that goes on for at least 2 pages and needs to avoid anything that might give it even a hint of meaning. Then you will have written a truly bad poem. Congratulations!

But wait! Truly bad poetry doesn’t exist…or does it? Meet the official worst poet of all time.

A Notoriously Bad Poet

William McGonagall (1825-1902) was a Scottish poet and public performer. He is known for his notoriously bad poetry. According to Wikipedia, two of his worst poems are The Tay Bridge Disaster and The Famous Tay Whale. Let’s look at the Tay Bridge Disaster to see why it’s bad. These are the opening lines:

“Beautiful railway bridge of the silv’ry Tay
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last sabbath day of 1879
Which will be remember’d for a very long time. […]”

Isn’t it wonderful how each line has a different number of syllables? There’s no regular metre. And the rhymes of “Tay-say-away-day” are all simple and easy to recognize.

Instead of showing us the beautiful bridge and then describing the terrible events as they happened on the bridge, the poet immediately tells us that the bridge took away 90 lives. He’s presenting the conclusion of the story right at the beginning. So, why read on?

Mind you, William McGonagall was still a much-sought performer, and that goes to show that you can get some fame even with bad poetry. However, as with all doggerels, there’s a strong possibility that his listeners didn’t take his poetry quite seriously.

The Last Word

I certainly hope you don’t take these tips for writing bad poetry seriously. They’re meant as an entertaining way to point you in the opposite direction. Have some fun writing poetry, and don’t be afraid to fail. It’s a journey, right? Remember, even William McGonagall did have his fans. Happy writing!

By Susanne Bennett. Susanne is a German-American writer who is a journalist by trade and a writer by heart. After years of working at German public radio and an online news portal, she has decided to accept challenges by Deadlines for Writers. Currently she is writing her first novel with them. She is known for overweight purses and carrying a novel everywhere. Follow her on Facebook.

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