Poet’s Toolkit
Pocketry has you covered with all the tools you will need to find your voice, overcome the blank page, learn poetic techniques, and improve your writing!
Getting Started
Staring at a blank page is no fun. That’s where Pocketry comes in. We’ve got a whole lot of free online resources for you to get your creativity flowing, help you improve your writing and develop your craft. As well as some great books to buy or borrow from your local library.
Looking for inspiration? You’ve come to the right place!
Finding Inspiration
Visit Pocketry’s Poetry page for a list of poets and books we recommend reading.
An online poetry prompt portal where you can download paper ephemera to create beautiful poems! It’s a mash up of word games, children’s toys, paper craft, book binding and poetry.
Creative Process
Divedapper is a free website dedicated to featuring in depth interviews with contemporary poets.
The Work of Art: Inside the Creative Process of Beloved Artists, Poets, Musicians, and Other Makes of Meaning by Maria Popova
In this essay from the Marginalian, Popova dissects what it means to be an artist and make art. be that a poem, a painting or a song.
William Wordsworth on the creative process in poetry by Dennis Mellersh
Wordsworth is one of England’s most famous poets and in the preface to the book, Lyrical Ballads, he talked about the creative process.
Essays on the Craft
Experience, Experiment: Using Black poetry in creative writing classes by Patrica Spears Jones
Australian Ecopoetics Past, Present, Future: What Do the Plants Say? by John Charles Ryan
Nature Writing Project from Island Magazine
Toward A Living Archive of African Poetry by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani (Akashic Books, 2025)
Tools
Found a poem you like? Put it onto the poetry analysis tool and it will tell you all bout the poems’ structure, syllables and rhyme schemes.
Writing Poetry
Poems are complicated creatures, Even the ones that look simple on the surface have a lot going on underneath.
There is definitely an art to writing a poem. Luckily, like most things, it’s an art that you can learn. Especially with some of these resources that we’ve rounded up for you!
How To Write a Poem
How to Make a Poem by CM Burroughs
This helpful guide from the Poetry Foundation gives examples of famous poems and helps you write a poem even when you think you have nothing to write about.
How to Seed a Poetry Garden by Jen Schneider
A poetic guide to writing poetry that uses the garden as metaphor for the art of crafting a new poem or planting seeds so that your words will flourish.
How to Write Poetry by Minnie Walters
A great introduction to the art and craft of writing a poem, covering everything from brainstorming and choosing a theme to finding a voice and enjoying the process.
How to Write a Poem by Laura Hershey
Because poets love to write about writing, here’s a poem about writing a poem!
Books
(Not free but worth the $$$)
Kate Clanchy How To Grow Your Own Poem
Mary Oliver The Poetry Handbook
The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms
Poetry Workshops
How to Read a Poem from University of York on Future Learn
Sharpened Visions : A Poetry Workshop with Douglas Kearnney at Coursera
Writing Groups
Live Write from Writers Victoria
Overcoming Writer’s Block
6 Tips for Eliminating Writer’s Block
What should you do if you can’t write a poem? Why write a poem about not being able to write a poem! Find this and other tips over at Power Poetry.
8 Tried and True Ways to Get Over Writer’s Block
There’s nothing worse than feeling like you’ll never write another line of poetry again. But you can and you will, especially if you follow some of these tips!
10 Poetry Writing Prompts to Overcome Writer’s Block
Break your mental block and get writing with these great prompts.
Editing Poetry
Once you’ve written your first draft it’s time to polish your poem and make it amazing!
You might want to add in some metaphors or edit your words so that they say exactly what you want to say. You can even take your words and use them to draw pictures!
Poetic Devices
Poetic Devices List: 27 Main Poetic Devices with Examples
This list is an excellent introduction to some of the most common devices used in poetry. Why do you need them? To elevate your writing to the next level of course!
Editing
Christian Bök’s 10 Rules for Writing Poetry
Christian Bök is the author of the poetry collection Eunoia in which each chapter is dedicated to words contacting a single vowel. He’s also the creator of these 10 Rules for Writing Poetry which are excellent advice for editing your poetry to make it amazing.
Formatting
With this awesome website you can literally turn your lines of text into works of art! First hit the big red button. Next enter your text in the text field in the box in the top right hand corner. Then hold your mouse down on the page and start drawing!
Tools
Once you’ve let your imagination run wild and spent some time writing a poem, you might want to call in some help with the editing process. Or maybe you’ve hit a wall and can’t think of what to write next? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered!
Pocketry has taken on the task of putting together a list of resources we can’t do without so that you can spend your time writing amazing verse, not looking for the right tools! Best of all, these are all free!
Don’t stop writing or everything will get deleted! An app for the brave.
A ribald and risqué dictionary covering the last five hundred years of colourful language.
or to come up with amazing new words, mind maps are an excellent tool for busting writer’s block.
An online tool to find rhymes, synonyms, adjectives, antonyms, homophones, definitions, quotes and more.
With a built in rhyming dictionary and thesaurus, this text editor for poets is incredible. Perfect for writing poetic forms, it lets you count syllables and words as well as showing you the meter for your poem. It’s built by a poet and it shows!
Possibly our favourite writing tool. For every 100 words you write, you get a picture of a kitten!
Set a word limit and write without distractions. No pop up windows, no complicated menu bars or formatting options. It’s just you, the keyboard and the screen. A blessing in today’s attention deficit world.
Get an editor in your pocket!
This pocket-sized guide covers everything you need to know to edit your poetry!
Discover tools for improving your writing with this handy reference for editing your poetry. You’ll learn to create great titles, add flavour with arresting language, cut unnecessary words, how to be authentic and relatable, tips for good formatting and the use of white space as well as how to create powerful endings.
A must-read for any poet serious about taking their writing to the next level!
