Humans are creatures of habit. It’s tempting to find one or two poetic forms you like and stick with them for the rest of your life. But don’t let yourself get complacent! No matter where you are on your poetry journey, it’s always useful to experiment with new forms. Here’s why.

You’ll become a better poet

Your skills will only improve if you step outside your comfort zone and take on new challenges. The restrictions imposed by different poetic forms dare you to be creative in different ways — and teach you lessons you can apply to your “typical” form as well.

A palindrome poem, for example, calls for serious structural creativity. The poem has to make sense whether you read the lines from top to bottom or bottom to top. Some of the most famous palindrome poems, like Jonathan Reed’s The Lost Generation, present a negative message when read forward and a positive one when read backward. Try out this technique to see if you can do the same (it’s harder than it sounds!).

Diminishing verse, meanwhile, forces you to be inventive with your choice of vocabulary. This poetic form consists of three-line stanzas in which each line ends with the same word as the preceding line minus the first letter. You can see how this works in Tracy Davidson’s Waiting Room:

I have enough on my plate
without the doctor running late,
I can’t remember when last I ate.

My unbalanced diet he’ll likely scold,
say it’s partly why I’m always cold,
that I’m not knackered yet, just getting old.

The first challenge here is finding words that still work when you remove the first letter twice. The second, of course, is connecting all these words to craft a meaningful poem.

You might think some of these forms are so specific that you won’t gain much from experimenting with them. But remember, even if you never use them again, you’ll have improved your ability to think “outside the box” — which is crucial in the abstract world of poetry.

You’ll find new inspiration

On the other hand, rather than merely dabbling with a certain type of poem, you might actually fall in love with it. Maybe after your first palindrome poem, you’ll get addicted to the challenge of the two-way semantic street, and every poem will thereafter be a palindrome.

Or, feelings aside, you might realize a poem you’ve been trying to write requires another form to succeed — whether that adds a new layer of meaning, elaborates upon something that’s missing, or simply allows the poem to “breathe” with fewer restrictions.

On her blog, poet Seetha shares how her nature poem of sorts, Sustainable Love, initially followed a standard stanza format. However, experimentation led her to turn it into a “concrete” poem — taking a shape that reflects its subject matter. In Seetha’s poem, the shape of a shovel reminds us of gardening, emphasizing the nurturing process.

Trying other forms can also help you overcome writer’s block. Getting to grips with new rules is a good distraction — and distraction has been proven to lead to creative breakthroughs.

You’ll help keep cultural traditions alive

Finally, expanding your poetic knowledge not only benefits you personally, but also helps keep less common poetic forms alive and accessible to others.

Non-Western poetic forms are in particular danger. Beyond preserving these cultural traditions, connecting with other cultures’ forms broadens your horizons and exposes you to a wider range of source materials. The deeper this wellspring is, the more likely you are to find your unique voice and preferred poetic style.

My favorite non-Western poetic forms are the pantoum and the ghazal. The pantoum originally comes from Malaysia, and was introduced to Western literature by French poets in the 19th century. It consists of four-line stanzas, whereby lines 2 and 4 of one stanza make up lines 1 and 3 of the next.

Sands of Time by Bernard F. Asuncion is a great example of a rhyming pantoum. Its first two stanzas are:

The moments slip like sand through open hands,
A fragile beauty that we cannot hold.
We chase the echoes in these shifting lands,
A story whispered as the years unfold.

A fragile beauty that we cannot hold,
The shadows lengthen as the day descends.
A story whispered as the years unfold,
We search for meaning where the journey ends.

The ghazal (pronounced “guzzle”) originated as an Arabic poem dealing with love and loss. It was adopted by Persians in medieval times, who expanded the subject matter to include themes of religion and mysticism.

A ghazal consists of couplets that all end on the same word. The penultimate words also all rhyme, and the first stanza includes the repeated and rhyming word in the first line, too. The final couplet includes a proper noun, often the name of the poet.

Agha Shahid Ali’s poem Tonight is a perfect example of an English-language ghazal. It begins:

Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell tonight?
Whom else from rapture’s road will you expel tonight?

Those “Fabrics of Cashmere—” “to make Me beautiful—”
“Trinket”—to gem—“Me to adorn—How tell”—tonight?

I beg for haven: Prisons, let open your gates—
A refugee from Belief seeks a cell tonight.

There are countless more poetic forms out there. Browse this list of over 100 different forms on Writer’s Digest and experiment with those that stand out to you. Whether you find your next go-to form or simply appreciate the challenges faced by medieval poets, you’ll learn something new about the world — and yourself.

Loretta Bushell writes for Reedsy, a marketplace that connects writers with freelance publishing professionals and provides resources on all things writing and publishing. Her poems were once published in a school magazine, but she now mainly writes poetry to outdo her partner in the romance department or win the next round of her family’s very own Taskmaster..

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