What makes a poem a poem?

Words made to be heard and seen

Say "I heard the creek and the echoes calling" and it is just a sentence. Now read it the way the poet Henry Kendall wrote it in a book published in 1869: By channels of coolness the echoes are calling, / And down the dim gorges I hear the creek falling; (A slash shows where one line of a poem ends.) What changed? The meaning is much the same, but the sound, the beat and the pictures are very different.

The word poem comes from an ancient Greek word meaning "something made". A poem is writing that has been made with extra care. Poets choose words for how they sound as well as what they mean, and they decide exactly where each line stops. There is no single rule that turns writing into a poem, but poets use four main tools: rhythm, sound patterns such as rhyme, imagery and line breaks. A poem might use all four, or only one or two.

We will meet these tools in two famous Australian poems from the 1800s: "Bell-Birds" by Henry Kendall, and "The Man from Snowy River" by Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson. Paterson's poem first appeared in The Bulletin magazine on 26 April 1890, and a book of his poems sold out in a week when it came out in 1895.

Rhythm: the beat inside the words

Every spoken line has a rhythm, a pattern of stronger and weaker syllables. Many poems arrange these into a steady pattern, called metre, a bit like the beat in a song. Here are the opening lines of "The Man from Snowy River": There was movement at the station, for the word had passed around / That the colt from old Regret had got away, / And had joined the wild bush horses – he was worth a thousand pound, / So all the cracks had gathered to the fray.

Read it out loud and tap along. You can feel a bouncing, galloping beat: strong beats with a few quick, light syllables in between. Paterson chose a rhythm that feels like a horse at full stretch, because the poem is about a wild chase on horseback. The rhythm is part of the story.

Rhythm does not have to be a steady pattern, though. Many modern poems use free verse, which has no fixed pattern and follows the natural rhythm of speech instead.

Rhyme and the music of sounds

Rhyme is when words match in sound, usually at the ends of lines. In Paterson's first four lines, "around" rhymes with "pound", and "away" rhymes with "fray". Rhyme gives a poem a satisfying click, and it makes lines easier to remember, which is one reason this poem is still so well known more than 130 years later.

Poets also play with sounds in other ways. Listen to Kendall describing the call of the bell-bird: And, softer than slumber, and sweeter than singing, / The notes of the bell-birds are running and ringing. "Singing" and "ringing" rhyme, but there is more. Words close together that start with the same sound, like "softer", "slumber", "sweeter" and "singing", make alliteration. And "ringing" sounds like a bell, which is a trick called onomatopoeia. Real bell miners make a sweet, bell-like "tink".

Poems do not have to rhyme at all. Rhyme is actually a fairly recent habit in the West: most ancient Greek and Roman poetry did not rhyme, and rhyme became common in Europe in the medieval period. Many of the best poems ever written do not use it.

Imagery: pictures in your head

Imagery is language that lets you imagine something you can see, hear, smell, touch or taste. Go back to Kendall's first two lines. "Channels of coolness" lets you feel the air. "Echoes are calling" lets you hear the valley. "Dim gorges" and "the creek falling" let you see it. Hardly any facts are given, but a whole place appears.

Poets also compare things in fresh ways. A simile uses "like" or "as": "the moon was like a pale coin". A metaphor says one thing simply is another: "the moon was a pale coin". Both help you see an ordinary thing in a new way.

Paterson uses imagery to make a contrast in "Clancy of the Overflow". A man stuck in a dusty city office imagines the free life of a drover in the bush: And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended, / And at night the wond'rous glory of the everlasting stars. Those "sunlit plains" and "everlasting stars" are everything the office worker cannot see from his window.

Line breaks: where the poet stops

Look at how a poem sits on the page. In a story, sentences run to the edge of the page and wrap around. In a poem, the poet decides exactly where each line ends. This choice is called a line break, and some poets say it is the one thing that most separates poetry from other kinds of writing.

Sometimes a sentence ends exactly where the line ends. Other times a sentence tumbles over the end of one line into the next, which is called enjambment. Paterson's first line does this. It ends with "for the word had passed around", but the thought is not finished. You have to read on to the next line, "That the colt from old Regret had got away", to find out what the word was. The reader is pulled forward, just like the riders.

📚 Words to know

Rhythm

The pattern of stronger and weaker beats in the sounds of words.

Rhyme

Words that match in sound, like "pound" and "around". Rhyme usually comes at the ends of lines.

Imagery

Words that help you imagine what you can see, hear, smell, touch or taste.

Alliteration

Repeating the same first sound in words that are close together, like "softer" and "slumber".

Enjambment

When a sentence runs on over the end of one line of a poem into the next.

🧪 Try this: write a four-line poem about a place you know

1. Choose a place you know well, such as the beach, your street or the school oval. Close your eyes and list five things you can see, hear, smell, touch or taste there.
2. Pick your best two or three and write four lines. Try to use at least one sound pattern, such as alliteration ("salty spray on sun-soaked sand").
3. Read your lines out loud and tap the beats. Change words until the rhythm feels right to you, either steady like Paterson's galloping lines, or loose like speech.
4. Try rhyme: make the ends of lines 2 and 4 rhyme. Then rewrite the poem with no rhyme at all. Which version sounds better to you?
5. Play with line breaks. Write one sentence on a single line, then write it again on two lines, breaking it in a different place each time. How does the feeling change?
6. Challenge: read your poem to someone and ask what they could see and hear.