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How to Write a Form Poem: A Guided Tour of 10 Fabulous Forms: includes anthology & prompts! sonnets, sestinas, haiku, villanelles, pantoums, ghazals, rondeaux, odes & more + variations
Looking for a poetry handbook to spark your imagination and guide you in the pleasures of writing poetry with heart and soul?Explore this inspiring "workshop in a book." No matter your level, you can make poems that express more deeply and impact more richly. Poems to keep. Poems to share.From the author of How to Read a Poem and How to Write a Poem, comes a truly delightful book on how to write poetry in form. Tania Runyan's previous How to Write a Poem focused on free verse. It covered the powerful techniques of poetry image, sound, line breaks, surprising insights, risk-taking, revision strategies. It also provided practical resources to get your poems published. This companion book builds on How to Write a Poem, revealing the world of classic and new poetry forms, to help you grow and explore more.How to Write a Form Poem is a helpful guide for poetry beginners. It's an inspiring reference (and a fun read) for experienced poets of all levels. It's also a useful tool for teachers who want an accessible, informative, imaginative text for students—with plenty of tips for how to actually approach writing the forms, lots of sample poems to illustrate the forms + intriguing poetry prompts!How to Write a Form Poem covers 10 fabulous forms—sonnets, sestinas, haiku, villanelles, pantoums, ghazals, rondeaux, odes, acrostics (the real kind), found poems + surprising variations on classic forms (triolet, anyone?), to challenge you when you're ready to go the extra mile.You'll also be entertained by Runyan's own travel stories that she uses to explain and explore the various forms—the effect of which is to bring form poetry down to earth (and onto your own poetry writing map). Carnival, lighthouse, monument, state park...she uses them all to help explain the exciting world of how to write poems in form. Her travels also result in a collection of satisfying sample poems she shares with readers.Other sample poems include works from both popular and emerging poets from many walks of life and geographies. In your anthology travels here, you'll meet (or get reacquainted with) Conor O'Callaghan, Richard Pierce, Ashley M. Jones, William Shakespeare, John Keats, Claude McKay, Tom Hunley, Elizabeth Bishop, Celia Lisset Alvarez, Elise Paschen, Frank O'Hara, Victoria Chang, Joshua Gage, Katie Manning, Seth Haines, Natasha Trethewey, David K. Wheeler, Chip Livingston, John McCrae, Rick Maxson, Robert Bridges, Albert Giraud, Charles Henry Luders, Janet Aalfs, Rebecca Lauren, Marci Rae Johnson, Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, Matsuo Basho, Matsuo Allard, Amy Lowell, Charles B. Dickson, Christopher Patchel, Michelle Ortega, Ezra Pound, Sandra Heska King, Todd C. Truffin, Erin Keane, John Poch, L.L. Barkat, Susan Rothbard, Gabriel Spera, David Wright, Isaac Willis, Jeanne Murray Walker, Benjamin Myers, Murray Silverstein, Monica Sharman, Barbara Crooker, deb y felio, Faisal Mohyuddin, Edgar Allan Poe, Aaron Brown, Zeina Hashem Beck, Dheepa Maturi, John Drury, Marjorie Maddox, Jill Baumgaertner, Maureen E. Doallas, Juditha Dowd, Thomas Gray, Ron Wallace, Lucille Clifton, Alexander Pope, Clint Smith, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Barbara Howes, Sara Barkat, Megan Willome, Allison Joseph, Claire Batemen, Glynn Young, John Stevenson, Jim Kacian, Carolyn Hall, Roberta Beary, Lorin Ford, Clement Hoyt, and Wallace Stevens. Whew!How to Write a Form Poem is a little adventure waiting for you.
*** Learn about the poets' processes and poem backstories when you visit
*** Learn about the poets' processes and poem backstories when you visit
250 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 15, 2021
20 people are currently reading
29 people want to read
About the author
Tania Runyan
14 books42 followersTania Runyan is the author of several poetry collections, including What Will Soon Take Place, Second Sky, and A Thousand Vessels. Her first book-length creative nonfiction title, Making Peace With Paradise: An Autobiography of a California Girl, was released in 2022. Tania’s instructional guides, How to Read a Poem, How to Write a Poem, and How to Write a Form Poem, are used in classrooms across the country, and her poems have appeared in publications such as Poetry, Image, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, and The Christian Century. Tania was awarded an NEA Literature Fellowship in 2011. She lives with her family in Illinois, where she teaches sixth grade language arts.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 2, 2021
I mean. . .
April 9, 2021
I'm looking forward to using this book as a college textbook next fall. My favorite chapter is the one on found poetry, although it seems out of place. I don't consider found poetry a form in the same way that the pantoum is a form or the ghazal is a form.
July 11, 2022
How to Write a Form Poem: A Guided Tour of 10 Fabulous Forms: includes anthology & prompts! sonnets, sestinas, haiku, villanelles, pantoums, ghazals, rondeaux, odes & more + variations Tania Runyan
Forms are how I was introduced to poetry, and I bet you were too. I still have my copy of Pegasus, a little book our fourth- and fifth-grade language arts class produced, a collection of eight different forms, plus Christmas poems (because why not). I still remember writing these poems. The forms were not a lock — chaining me somewhere I did not want to go — but a key, transforming a memory into a poem. That is the freedom form provides.
It’s a freedom Tania Runyan explores in her brand-new book from T.S. Poetry Press. Runyan has shown us "How to Read a Poem," and "How to Write a Poem." In her new book she shows us "How to Write a Form Poem: A Guided Tour of 10 Fabulous Forms."
"Form brings a freedom you didn’t know you lacked,” she writes.
Freedom is a word that’s similar to the word generosity. We write because we want to share, to be generous with words and ideas. But sometimes we can’t get the poem we’re writing to gel, no matter how many times we erase and try again. Using a form can often free us to be the generous writers we hope to be.
Runyan uses a travel theme to not only explain what each of the ten forms are, but also to share her own journey learning to write each one. So we learn that the villanelle is good to try on short plane flights. Or that found poetry is a cure for writer’s block. Or that an ode can be an outlet for writing about obsessions.
Perhaps my favorite part of Runyan’s form poetry journey is her saga with sonnets.
"Writing that first sonnet is about survival,” she writes.
She goes on to say that sonnets were not her thing, until she discovered that the form’s “limitations are my freedom.” She decides to write fifteen sonnets, one for each of the prime numbers of her life, and each sonnet is epistolary, addressed to herself at that age. It forces her to write about ages she had ignored in previous poems.
I have been spending much of this school year playing with sonnets, and now (shhh!) I think they’re kinda fun. One challenge I enjoy giving myself is when I stumble upon a sonnet, either at Every Day Poems, or on a poetry podcast, or as one of the dozen in How to Write a Form Poem, I try to imitate it.
First I journal about the poem, writing down its rhyme scheme and anything else that catches my eye, and then I write my own poem in the same style. Because I’m working within limitations, a free-verse poem that might have resembled a piece of prose with random line breaks now has a bit of heft.
At the end of each chapter of How to Write a Form Poem is a way to Go the Extra Mile. For the sonnet chapter, that includes moving from a Shakespearean to a Petrarchan and a Spenserian, or by going big with a sonnet sequence or a crown of sonnets. The end of the book includes more examples of each form, and each includes a writing prompt.
I’ve been working on a group of sonnets in March, but I still haven’t gotten the hang of iambic pentameter — something Runyan suggests can be internalized with The Sonnet Stroll, the da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM of walking. So this week, while taking my dogs for their constitutional, I brought along a recording of myself reading the Shakespearean sonnets in the book: da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM. And then I picked up my pencil and wrote again.
Forms are how I was introduced to poetry, and I bet you were too. I still have my copy of Pegasus, a little book our fourth- and fifth-grade language arts class produced, a collection of eight different forms, plus Christmas poems (because why not). I still remember writing these poems. The forms were not a lock — chaining me somewhere I did not want to go — but a key, transforming a memory into a poem. That is the freedom form provides.
It’s a freedom Tania Runyan explores in her brand-new book from T.S. Poetry Press. Runyan has shown us "How to Read a Poem," and "How to Write a Poem." In her new book she shows us "How to Write a Form Poem: A Guided Tour of 10 Fabulous Forms."
"Form brings a freedom you didn’t know you lacked,” she writes.
Freedom is a word that’s similar to the word generosity. We write because we want to share, to be generous with words and ideas. But sometimes we can’t get the poem we’re writing to gel, no matter how many times we erase and try again. Using a form can often free us to be the generous writers we hope to be.
Runyan uses a travel theme to not only explain what each of the ten forms are, but also to share her own journey learning to write each one. So we learn that the villanelle is good to try on short plane flights. Or that found poetry is a cure for writer’s block. Or that an ode can be an outlet for writing about obsessions.
Perhaps my favorite part of Runyan’s form poetry journey is her saga with sonnets.
"Writing that first sonnet is about survival,” she writes.
She goes on to say that sonnets were not her thing, until she discovered that the form’s “limitations are my freedom.” She decides to write fifteen sonnets, one for each of the prime numbers of her life, and each sonnet is epistolary, addressed to herself at that age. It forces her to write about ages she had ignored in previous poems.
I have been spending much of this school year playing with sonnets, and now (shhh!) I think they’re kinda fun. One challenge I enjoy giving myself is when I stumble upon a sonnet, either at Every Day Poems, or on a poetry podcast, or as one of the dozen in How to Write a Form Poem, I try to imitate it.
First I journal about the poem, writing down its rhyme scheme and anything else that catches my eye, and then I write my own poem in the same style. Because I’m working within limitations, a free-verse poem that might have resembled a piece of prose with random line breaks now has a bit of heft.
At the end of each chapter of How to Write a Form Poem is a way to Go the Extra Mile. For the sonnet chapter, that includes moving from a Shakespearean to a Petrarchan and a Spenserian, or by going big with a sonnet sequence or a crown of sonnets. The end of the book includes more examples of each form, and each includes a writing prompt.
I’ve been working on a group of sonnets in March, but I still haven’t gotten the hang of iambic pentameter — something Runyan suggests can be internalized with The Sonnet Stroll, the da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM of walking. So this week, while taking my dogs for their constitutional, I brought along a recording of myself reading the Shakespearean sonnets in the book: da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM. And then I picked up my pencil and wrote again.
July 17, 2022
4-1/2 stars. Lots of good poetry prompts!
September 27, 2022
Love this book. Tania Runyan writes in an approachable way that sort of calms the swirling waters of poetry-writing fears.
For me, the book was inspirational. I ended up writing a poem that went on to be published.
I'd recommend this book to writers of all levels who would like to try a different approach to writing poems or to teachers looking for an immediately useful resource.
For me, the book was inspirational. I ended up writing a poem that went on to be published.
I'd recommend this book to writers of all levels who would like to try a different approach to writing poems or to teachers looking for an immediately useful resource.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews