EVER wondered how did great poets like Shakespeare, Keats and Wordsworth write such fascinating poems? And what does it take for a person to become a poet and who qualifies as a poet?

In simple English, a poet is a person who composes poetry but, according to Merriam Webster Dictionary, a poet is “one (as a creative artist) of great imaginative and expressive capabilities and special sensitivity to the medium.”

So, according to this definition, we may assume that rhyming can be done by anyone but, to be a poet, one needs to be sensitive enough to observe those phenomenon that might seem unimportant to others. Poem is a piece of writing that usually has figurative language and that is written in separate lines that often have a repeated rhythm and sometimes rhyme.

There are several ways to categorise poems. Some do it on the basis of cultural diversity and some do it on the basis of lingual diversity. Here we’ll look at the most common types of poems.

Sonnet A SONNET is derived from the Italian word “sonetto” which means “little song”. A sonnet is a poem of 14 lines arranged in octave (eight lines) rhyming.

The first set introduces the topic, the second elaborates and the third usually shows a twist in the poem. Usually sonnets are love poems with a touch of vivid imaginary.

Shakespeare wrote more than 150 sonnets and is credited with making this form of poetry popular.

Ballad

A BALLAD is an ancient form of storytelling. In the past, common people didn’t get their stories from books. They were sung as musical poems which were meant to convey information.

Ballads usually have a simple rhythm and a consistent rhyme scheme. They often tell the story of everyday heroes and carried the cultural memories of medieval folk in an oral tradition. In 18th and 19th centuries, Romantic and Victorian poets took hold of this folk-song form and wrote literary ballads, telling their own stories and thus narrative poems were formed.

Satire

IT is a humorous poem in which social flaws are subjected to criticism. It usually has irony and sarcasm as its notable features.

The Romans had a strong tradition of satirical poetry, often written for political purposes. Parodies are also considered as satirical poetry. One of its subtypes is ‘lampoon’ which is directed against an individual or institution.

Haiku

HAIKU (high-koo) are unrhymed short poems that use sensory language to capture a feeling or image. They are often inspired by an element of nature, a moment of beauty or a poignant experience.

Haiku poetry was originally developed by Japanese poets in the 17th century. Later the form was adapted to English and other languages.

Ghazal

GHAZAL is a poetic form favoured by poets writing in Persian, Arabic and Urdu languages. It comprises couplets or “sher”.

The most important thing about a ghazal is that each of the couplets is capable of standing alone. In other words, each two lines represent something different and do not need the previous or following two lines to be understood. But when all of the couplets are put together, there is a recurring theme involved.

Epic

ONE of the longest types of poems, the epic poem is a long narrative poem glorifying the deeds and adventures of heroic or legendary figures, or the past history of a nation. It is a genre of classical poetry dating back to the times of Ancient Greece, and began as folk stories that were originally passed down from generation to generation in the oral form.

One of the oldest epic poems is one of the oldest pieces of written literature in the world, called The Epic of Gilgamesh, and dates back to 1800 BC. Other notable epics include The Odyssey and The Iliad.

Elegy

AN elegy is a poem of mourning. It can express a lament over the death of a loved one or for more than one person, as in the case of Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, which mourns all the occupants of that churchyard and looks into the future to mourn the poet’s own death.

Sometimes elegies are written not just to be read aloud but also to be put to music and sung at funerals and other such occasions.

Free verse

FREE verse is an open form of poetry that follows the rhythm of natural speech and does not use consistent metre patterns, rhyme, or any other musical pattern.

But free verses are not entirely ‘free’, as they employ other types of creative language tools such as alliteration, words that begin with the same sound, or assonance, the repetition of vowel sounds.

The poet chooses the length of each line and the length of the poem according to the message, or feeling he or she wishes to communicate. It is considered a less restrictive type of poetry to write and first became popular in the 1800s. TS Eliot was one of the masters of the form, and his poems The Waste Land and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, are good examples of free verse.

Terza rima

THE name of this type of poem is reflective of its nature – the lines are arranged in groups of three, called ‘tercets’. The poem can have multiple groups of three lines, and the lines are generally of 10 or 11 syllables. There is no specified number of stanzas in the form but the poem usually ends with a single line or a couplet rhyming with the middle line of the last tercet.

Italian poet Dante created this form, and his poem Divine Comedy is one of the best-known examples of terza rima.

Limerick

A LIMERICK is a poem that is often silly or whimsical, written in five lines with an AABBA rhyme scheme. A popular form in children’s verse, limericks often tell a short, humorous story.

Mother Goose nursery rhymes, first published in 1791, are examples of limerick, and they follow a strict rhyme scheme and bouncy rhythm, to make them easy to memorise.

Tips to be an effective poet

• Always be prepared for a poetic inspiration to strike you, meaning, for some poetic lines to come into your mind. Carry a notebook with you. Fill it with whatever inspires you – a description or an observation and specially your thoughts on the subject. This will help you form and strengthen the habit of storing your ideas in the form of written words.

• Read loads of poetry. It will help you transform your ideas into poems and it will broaden your knowledge.

• Find a special place to work on your poetry; it might be a table, a shed or a corner. A poet needs time to be alone because loneliness is a gift for a poet. He needs to mediate alone to be able to hear his own poem before writing it down.

• The key is never let yourself go out of practice, even when you find it hard to concentrate. Either go for a walk or just brood on the subject in your mind. Writing down the points will help you focus on your poem.

Initially your poems might sound derivatives of other poems you might have read so, remember “It is in the nature of the literature to be full of echoes. It is bound to be because it is full of words.” — Michael Baldwin