Make Your Own Poetry Club!
10 tips to get started & keep going
What’s a Poetry Club?
A poetry club is the perfect pairing between a book club and a poetry experience. And since poems are shorter than books, there’s no need to read before your poetry club meets!
Here are ten ideas for how to begin your poetry club (and keep it going). The ideas are arranged in order, with the first ones helping to lay the groundwork and the last ones working to help the club explore more deeply.
1. Start With the Familiar—A Memoir Book Club Selection
Your friends, co-workers, or students are already familiar with regular book clubs. So, to begin your poetry club, consider starting with familiar territory: a memoir with a tender story at its heart.
Our choice is The Joy of Poetry: How to Keep, Save & Make Your Life With Poems. It’s an engaging memoir that also begins building the foundation for “why poetry” and “how poetry.” Plus, it includes extras like :
• how to keep a poetry journal
• how to be a poetry buddy (with a friend)
• how to do a poetry dare (with a community)
2. Ease in With a Poetry Coloring Party
Many people don’t realize that poetry can be a low-key experience that doesn’t require any particular expertise to make a start. A great way to communicate this truth is to ease in with a coloring party. Use our free coloring page poems and our poets coloring book to kick off your party.
3. Try Good Poetry Audio
Why try audio at the start?
First, audio is engaging and enjoyable when done well. It’s like hearing a story—you feel more free to just enjoy and not analyze, and that’s important for creating some baseline comfort in your new club.
Also, you’ll eventually want to be reading poems to each other during your poetry club. Listening to good poetry audio from the start will help you learn, in a fun and seamless way, how to read a poem aloud.
Try this, to begin:
• Major Jackson’s Slowdown podcast
And, for basic tips on reading poetry aloud, check out our post on How to Read a Poem [PAID Subscribers]
[NOTE: more audio available after paywall, below]
4. Make This Your Next Book Selection
To get everyone in your poetry club on the same page, so to speak, it can be helpful to use this fun, thoughtful, and totally accessible book as one of your early reading experiences.
Those who have more familiarity with reading poetry will enjoy the book’s engaging perspective and its built-in anthology. Those with less poetry-reading familiarity will get a gentle introduction to how poems work and how to approach discussing them.
The book also includes simple activities that your club can go through together, as you make your way through each of the vital topics that are covered.
How to Read a Poem: Based on the Billy Collins Poem “Introduction to Poetry”
5. Choose a Poetry Collection With a Theme
Now that you’ve got a good foundation for your club, you’ll want to start digging in with poetry collections and anthologies. These are organized in different ways. Some are simply collections of poems from a certain time period in a poet’s life (or a group of poet’s lives). Others are more theme based.
We suggest you begin with a theme-based collection, which can give a sense of cohesion for those who are newer to the poetry club experience. Here are a few ideas to get you started:
6. Memorize Poems (Or Parts of Poems) Together
As your group becomes more comfortable with poetry, you might want to try committing poetry together. You needn’t memorize whole poems. You could also just memorize certain stanzas you love. For a bit of fun, make certificates or badges to celebrate your memory accomplishments. Here’s a sample of one of ours, from a Prufrock challenge:
7. Create Poetry Collages
Consider reading just one poem for some of your club meetings, then spend the rest of your time together creating artistic responses to the poem. Collage can be an especially fun way to respond. Then you can also share the poetry club love on Instagram using the #poetrycollage hashtag.
8. Learn About Form Poetry
While it can be easier to launch your club by exploring modern poets who write in free verse, your club will also eventually find it enriching to learn about the broader world of poetry. Form poems are part of that world. To begin, you can try this super helpful guide on how to get started (and keep going) with writing form poems.
Here at The Write to Poetry, our free book (PAID subscribers) contains both free verse and form poems, plus poetry prompts, if you want to both read and write with your poetry club.
9. Consider a Particular Poet
Some poets, like John Keats, have an interesting history. And, they even have fictional works that explore their history and their poems more fully.
To try this with Keats, begin here:
• a few good poems, history, and short fiction
• an engaging novel, Adjustments
• the movie Bright Star
10. Stay Poetic Even When You’re Not Meeting, With a Daily Poem Delivery
Finding the best in poetry isn’t always easy, but it’s always rewarding. To help you out, we offer a daily inbox poem delivery (paired with a beautiful, meditative photo).
We do the hard work of curating the best in poetry, so you can use your precious time to simply enjoy the poems.
You can use Every Day Poems to plan content for your clubs.
Or you can extend your club friendships and stay poetic with along with someone else, by being poetry buddies for a time. Learn more about one poetry buddy partnership, here.
Ask & Share
Got questions about creating your own poetry club? Feel free to ask. And do let us know how your club goes if you try it out!
Exclusive Extra Resources for Your Club
• inspiring audio from our Poems to Listen By performer Laurie Klein, who has also read for NPR!
• a free copy of The Mischief Café poems and prompt book
• a 50% discount on O: Love Poems from the Ozarks
Get the audio, free book, and discount here: