By letting positive emotions flow through words of love, joy and happiness, positive poetry emerges. Poetry is expressing powerful emotions through words that rhyme, lines with rhythmic meter or simply free verse. Poems are best when they are shared, especially when they are read aloud.

There are many styles of writing poetry. Here are a few POETRY FORMS to get you started:

Acrostic
Poetry that certain letters, usually the first in each line, form a word or message when read vertically.
Cinquain
Poetry with five lines. Line 1 has two syllables. Line 2 has four syllables. Line 3 has eight syllables, and line 5 has two syllables.
Couplet
A couplet is made up of two rhyming lines. One poem can be a series of couplets.
Diamante
A diamond-shaped poem with opposite nouns on lines 1 and 7; lines 2 and 6 have two adjectives that describe the nouns closest to them; lines 3 and 5 are the “-ing” verbs describing the nouns closest to them; line 4 is a transition line, with two related nouns for lines 1 and 7.
Free verse
Poetry written in either rhyme or unrhymed lines that have no set fixed metrical pattern.
Haiku
A Japanese poem with a nature theme composed of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables.
Italian Sonnet
A poem of eight lines with a rhyming pattern of abbaabba, followed by six lines of cdecde or cdcdcd.
Limerick
A humorous poem consisting of five lines. Lines 1, 2, and 5 have three beats of rhythm. The 3rd and 4th lines have two beats of rhythm. The rhyming pattern is aabba.
Narrative
A poem that tells a story.
Pantoum
A poem in which the second and fourth lines of the first stanza become the first and third lines of the next stanza, and the pattern continues, sometimes linking the last stanza back to the first to create a circular poem.
Quatrain
A stanza or poem consisting of four lines. Lines 2 and 4 must rhyme while having a similar number of syllables.
Rhyme
A rhyming poem has the repetition of the same or similar sounds of two or more words, often at the end of the line.
Senryu
A short Japanese style poem, similar to haiku in structure that treats human beings rather than nature.
Shape
Poetry written in the shape or form of an object.
Tanka
Follow the form for a Haiku, plus two more lines of seven syllables (5-7-5-7-7)

Here are some TECHNIQUES to make your poetry more interesting:

Onomatopoeia is easy to use, but not to spell. It is a word imitating a sound. For example; 'buzz' and 'beep'. Alliteration is used by starting three or more words with the same sound. An example of this would be 'The interesting, intelligent interrogater.' Similes are often used in poetry. They are an expression that compares one thing to another. An example of this would be 'The rock looked like a man’s face.'

Metaphors are words or phrases used one way to mean something else. Metaphors are similar to similes, except they do not use the words ‘like’ or ‘as’. An example is ‘The rock was the face of my beloved’.

Senses offer readers of poetry a pathway to emotions that such an important part of poetry. So as you write poetry, think about how to use some or all five senses – feeling, touching, tasting, seeing, hearing and smelling – to give your poems pizazzaz!