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Poetry Writing Tips:
How To Write Poems For Kids
First, get to know children well. Find out what encourages, worries, entices, or speaks to children of all ages - from preschoolers to elementary school kids to teens. Just being around your unique readers will help you to know how to write for a particular age group. Also, research their likely areas of interests and typical levels of child development.
Read contemporary and classical poems published for children, including nursery rhymes and limericks, but especially poems written with kids in mind.
The younger the child, the simpler your poem will need to be. For instance, young children love a regular rhythm or bouncy beat. Since they’re learning words themselves, toddlers and preschoolers also like the sounds of words such as the sound echoes they easily hear in rhymes and alliteration.
As you repeat the first sound of a word within a line, the resulting alliteration will enliven the sound and tempo of your poem. For example, “Big, bright beads of rain wet down the window.” If you carry sounds to extreme, alliteration creates kid-friendly tongue twisters such as “Suzy sells seashells by the seashore.” (Guess Suz didn’t live in FL where shells are free for picking :)
To get the most sound and sense out of each rhyming pair of words, use strong nouns and active verbs to make the rhymes. Each noun will sketch a quick picture of a person, place, or thing that a child can easily envision. Then active verbs will move those noun-pictures along. For instance, a rhyme of “bird/ stirred” brings to mind all sorts of possibilities you can play with as you create sense with sounds. Word like “of/ above” and “in/ when” do not provide a clear sound, clear picture, or clear meaning for anything.
Use nouns and active verbs to say more in less space. Although brevity works well in poetry writing in general, the effective use of space becomes even more important when you write for children. So be sparing of adjectives, adverbs, prepositions or passive verbs. (To brush up on parts of speech, the Resources page has hotlinks to English grammar sites.)
Develop a sense of play and good-natured humor to appeal to all ages of children. The catch comes in knowing what a preschooler, kindergartner, elementary school child, junior high kid, or older teen finds amusing, especially since this can change from one age level to the next or one mood to the next!
Use a repeated phrase or a lively refrain to help children join in the fun, get playfully involved in your poem, and also remember information. Like the refrain of a song, a poem’s refrain can be the same from one verse to the next. If you use a repetitive phrase other than a refrain, however, vary a word or two to develop your theme more fully and keep your readers interested.
To check the rhythm, read each poem aloud. Tap out the beat. If the rhythm becomes too regular, the poem will sound like a nursery rhyme. That’s perfect if you write for nursery school children but not older kids, teens, or young adults.
Older children and teenagers usually want more freedom in their lives, so let your poems reflect this too. For example, as you write free verse for teens and older children, let the words and lines flow loosely onto a page. Later go back and change the line breaks as needed, for instance, by mixing the line-lengths, going from short lines to long and vice versa.
Practice writing free verse for older youth and young adults. Free verse does not mean you have to omit all rhyme and rhythm. Free verse means being free of a regular beat or rhyme design. Feel free, however, to toss in rhymes and an offbeat rhythm. Just avoid a consistent pattern that readers then expect.
Read aloud each version and revision of every poem you write. Does anything seem “off” in the poem’s sound, sense, or rhythm? If so, keep playing with words, sound echoes, and line breaks until you find what works for the poem. If you’re unsure or you just want a professional opinion of your poems, you’ll get helpful feedback and practical suggestions in a poetry critique.
© 2010 Mary Harwell Sayler
P.O. Box 62
Lake Como, FL 32157-0062
All Rights Reserved
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