What poetry readers expect
Readers expect a voice, not just verses: images and preoccupations that recur and deepen, and poems that speak to each other across the book. Free verse drops fixed metre and rhyme but not craft; the line break, the white space and the sound of each line do the work rhyme would do.
Readers also notice generic poetry fast. AI drafts tend toward familiar imagery and tidy closing lines. The strongest AI-assisted collections use the model for drafts and variations and leave the final word choices to the poet.
Length and structure
Many collections run somewhere between about 40 and 100 printed pages, often 30 to 70 poems. That's far below most books in word count; the Short preset (12,000 words) is generous, so lower the word count for a slim collection.
Collections are often arranged in sections around a theme, a season, a relationship or a journey. Think about the first poem (an invitation into the book), the last (where you leave the reader) and the turn in the middle.
How Inkora writes a poetry collection
Planning produces the collection's premise, themes and sections, and each section is planned as four to eight poems with a title and subject or form. Reorder, rename and replace poems in the outline before writing starts.
Each poem starts with its own title heading, each line sits on its own line and stanzas are separated by blank lines, all kept exactly in the PDF, EPUB and DOCX. Poetry is deliberately excluded from the humanize pass used on prose, because repetition, fragments and unusual rhythm are tools of the form. Paste your own poems into any chapter and mix them with drafts if you like.
What to put in your brief
The brief is the “Your book idea & instructions” box in the new-book wizard. The more specific it is, the less generic the book. Here is an example, with the settings that go with it:
Free verse collection about my grandmother's garden in Lahore and my own small garden in Birmingham, UK, thirty years later. Eight short sections that move through a year, from spring to the following spring. Recurring images: jasmine, a rusted watering can, monsoon rain against the British drizzle, her hands and mine. Some poems in the voice of the garden itself. Spare, concrete, no rhyme, no tidy moral endings; short lines. I'll write about half the poems myself and use drafts for the rest. Include a few Urdu words without translating them.
Other wizard settings
- Genre
- Free Verse
- Audience
- Adult poetry readers
- Tone
- Lyrical & literary
- Length
- Short preset, lowered to about 6,000 words and 8 sections
Example outline: Two Gardens
A brief like the one above gives a plan along these lines. You can rename, reorder, add or delete chapters before any writing starts.
- 1
I. Seed Packet
Opening poems: a packet of jasmine seeds posted from Lahore to Birmingham.
- 2
II. Jasmine
Spring in Nani's garden, remembered at the age the poet was then.
- 3
III. The Watering Can
The rusted can that crossed the world in a suitcase, and what it carried.
- 4
IV. Monsoon / Drizzle
Summer rain in two countries, in poems that answer each other across the page.
- 5
V. What the Garden Says
Poems in the garden's own voice, patient and unsentimental.
- 6
VI. Her Hands, My Hands
Autumn: soil, seed-saving and the hands that taught the work.
- 7
VII. Frost
Winter, dormancy and grief after a phone call from Lahore.
- 8
VIII. Jasmine Again
Closing poems: the first flower in Birmingham, and the two gardens meeting.
Each entry is one section; each section is planned as four to eight titled poems.
Common mistakes
- Publishing first drafts. Poems live in revision more than any other form.
- Generic imagery (moonlight, oceans, hearts) instead of specific, owned details.
- Every poem ending on a neat moral line.
- No order: a collection should move, not just accumulate.
- Very small trim sizes for long lines, which forces wrapping.