FREE POEM WRITING RESOURCE
Three Ways to Title Any Poem
One ready-to-use worksheet to help you write titles for your poems.
Use this worksheet anytime you're title-stuck. Which happens to all of us!
GIVE ME ACCESS
With examples from
- Gwendolyn Brooks
- Jennifer Chang
- Marianne Moore
- Laura Hershey
- Morgan Parker
- James Wright
- Sandra María Esteves
- Terrance Hayes
- Frank O'Hara
- C.D. Wright
Get your free poem titles worksheet
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But Oliver, does it even matter what I title my poem?
Look, friend, I'm not here to hand down absolutes. But you clicked to this page for a reason so I think you know they do matter. I agree.
Whether you have written one poem or a thousand, titles can be challenging. The thing is, many poems have more than one good possible title. (Yeah, sometimes there's only one! For everything else, I'm talking to you.) Maybe you're unsure of where to begin to find these possibilities.
Then there's the deciding. Sometimes, when faced with lots of options, humans choose none at all. (I'm serious, look up the "fancy jams" study.)
It only made sense to create one ready-to-use guide to help you generate poem title ideas and choose one. This won't take all day- set a timer for 15 minutes and by the time you fill it out, you'll have three possibilities.
Do you need a title for a poem you've already written? Or, do you like to write your titles first (you wild thing)? Either way, this worksheet will guide you through it step by step.
LET'S DO ITAre you ready to spend some time on your poem titles?
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"This work of considering a title is something of the mythical craft to which we as artists are always referring--The Thing, once built, that is strong enough to float, even without us, but always for us."
—ALBERTO RÍOS
A NOTE FROM OLIVER
A title makes a way to call a poem closer.
If you've been around Spellworks at all, then you know I've been introducing one of my nieces to the poems of Emily Dickinson, who didn't title her poems while she was alive. The thing us, a title is a way to invoke a poem, to call it closer... and Dickinson left behind a lot of poems.
So Dickinson's poems are sometimes referred to by a number they've been assigned, other times by the first line of the poem. Because a title makes it possible to refer to the poems in tables of contents, in conversation, in literary criticism, in love letters, on reading lists, you name it.
invocation: the act of mentioning, referring to, calling upon...
You've got this,
Oliver
GIMME THE GOODS, OLIVER
Coming right up, poet. Where should I send it?
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