With two new anthologies about to be published by Wheelsong Books, I'm sure there will be many in the groups who would like to know how best to get their poems selected. Will your poems be chosen for publication by the panel? Well, it all depends if your poetry is good or bad poetry. If there is such a thing as bad poetry (and many would argue there is! Boring has something to do with it) then there must be characteristics that make it so bad. In this briefing, I want to show you some reasons why in the past, some poems have failed to be selected for publication in the Wheelsong Poetry Anthologies.
Firstly, to get into an anthology, your poetry should not be lengthy. It should be comparatively brief, normally no longer than one page of text. The publisher is constrained by page count. The more pages a book contains, the more expensive it is to publish. Wheelsong Anthologies are generally between 240-300 pages in length. We like to keep the costs down so everyone can afford to buy a copy.
Tip 1: Submit brief poems that are no more than 50 lines at the very most. Shorter poems will be favoured over longer ones.
Most poets don't tend to read poems by other writers. This is a sure-fire way to get stuck in a rut and to keep on churning out the same old same old. If they do read other poets' work, they tend to read old, dead poets rather than living, contemporary poets. This encourages them to become obsessed with archaic language, especially thee, thou, hast and any other kind of bygone vocabulary. And when they get this wrong, oh boy, do the get it wrong! It's embarrassing, and it causes me to move on without reading. Also, if you're wanting to excel in the spoken word kind of poetry, then you'll need to write in contemporary language that your audience will easily recognise and identify with.
Tip 2: Read widely, not just the dead poets, but the living ones as well! Try to pick up ideas from the many and varied ways poets of today construct their poetry. It will be an eye opener, and I guarantee you will never regret it. Best thing you can do is buy a copy (or more) of a Wheelsong Poetry Anthology, and check out the quality, themes and format of the poems that were selected.
Next, here are a few things you should definitely avoid:
Boring poetry uses sing-songy rhythm and forced (gratuitous) rhyme. Forced syntax doesn't do any favours for your reputation. Losing your reader because your rhymes don't make any sense - or worse - because they become completely predictable - is a great way to destroy your credibility. I recently made a comment about gratuitous rhymes. I was surprised when people took up the erroneous idea that I had said rhyming was bad. I didn't say that. I said that bad rhyming is bad. There's a difference. But people hear what they want to hear I guess...
Tip 3: If you can, write poetry that is free-form, and avoid rhyming if you feel it is constraining your creativity. If you are determined to stick to fixed form poetry with strict rhyming schemes, then experiment with rhyming that is unpredictable. I recently rhymed "Avoid them" with "I Siegfried and Royed 'em". I rhymed the entire phrase rather than just the end word. Experiment. You have nothing to lose.
Tip 4: Rhyme schemes can be as varied as you like. You can stick to the boring ABAB or AABB quatrain n schemes if you wish (good luck with that), or stretch yourself with ABCABC or ABACBCBA or even ABCABDABEDBCAEB - if it was good enough for Dylan Thomas, then you should be just fine.
Bad poetry is full of cliches, phrases that are so hackneyed the poem becomes laughable. Avoid the use of flat, uninteresting phrases like 'You broke my heart' - a simile would be more interesting: 'I am shattered like pottery on the hard surface of your indifference' seems more poetically astute.
Worse still is the use of cliched end rhymes. How often have you seen life/strife, or world/unfurled or love/above?
Tip 5: Be inventive with your language. You needn't address your topic head on. You can approach it obliquely, and keep your reader intrigued. Again, what have you got to lose?
Avoid preachy poems - 'do this or else' type writing. Also, avoid poetry that is self centred, and harps on about how badly treated you have been. The best poetry takes the mundane and every day, and transforms it into something magical.
Finally - is there a name for bad poetry? Yep. It's known as doggerel.
How are you going to avoid doggerel? Firstly, make sure your poetry creates emotional energy. Secondly, make your poetry unusual, interesting, intriguing, exciting etc. using whatever devices or techniques are at your disposal. Thirdly, create something that no-one else has ever created before - a new rhyme scheme, a new way of expressing the mundane, a new turn of phrase. Experiment and be different! Stand out from the crowd, and you're sure to be published!
Steve Wheeler
