Poet Marion Lougheed with some invaluable tips for putting together and publishing a collection of your poetry.
In the last few years, I crafted various versions of what eventually became Baggage Claim (Off Topic Publishing, 2025). I moved poems around, added and cut pieces, changed the title, restructured the concept more than once, and rewrote the dedication. It took time and thought over many months; the effort and delay paid off. I learned a lot and I’m happy with the final book.
What did I learn?
So what did I learn? There are lots of ways to tackle creative work, but here are five things to consider as you prepare your own poetry collection.
- Figure Out Your Throughline: Think of your collection like a concert, a novel, or an art exhibition. What connects the poems? Is there a theme? A narrative arc? Are there phrase or images that chime and echo throughout? Do the titles repeat themselves with one word changed each time? In other words, consider what makes these poems go together. It can be anything that makes sense to you. Maybe they all use the word “snippet” or they are all about things that you find in the toy box or they recount what the aliens are really talking about while they do their tests on humans… Literally anything. Knowing your throughline will give readers a handhold. It’ll also help you figure out which poems belong and what order to put them in. One way to play with the order is to print off or write out all the poems you think you might potentially fit. Lay them out on a flat surface and move them around. Getting away from your screen into a physical space can help your brain make decisions. Plus you can see your pieces all at once.
- Cut the Fluff: Every poem needs to earn its place in your collection. Do you notice you have a few poems on the same topic or that cover the same ground in a similar way? Which one is strongest? Do you have a friend who reads poetry who you can ask? Otherwise, just trust your gut. Which one hits the hardest (or the softest, if that’s the intention)? One strategy is to include the repetitive poems in a kind of woven pattern, like waves that return to the same topic or picture again and again. Maybe you want to create an effect of resonance or circularity. When I was editing the poetry chapbook All Forgotten Now, by Jennifer Mariani, she had composed several poems about the landscape in her homeland of Zimbabwe. We leaned into that as one aspect of the throughline. We also found that many poems returned to her sadness upon leaving home. For these, we picked only a few and wove them in among other poems with contrasting or complementary perspectives, imagery, and ideas.
- Start With a Bang: Put a strong poem at the start of your collection, especially one that guides us into the book. This poem sets the stage for things like tone, voice, and subject matter. Obviously, what constitutes an impactful poem will depend on each reader. But still, you are the arbiter of what you want your potential readers to experience first. The first poem is like the first bite of a new dish. Will it draw them in, entice them to read more? Will they think, Sure, fine, but that’s enough for me? Will they shrug and wander away to the next shiny thing? You can’t control people’s response, and not all books are meant for all readers. But by putting your best foot forward, you can welcome the readers that are meant for your poems. Give them an excellent taste right off the bat. First impressions really do matter.
- Think About Your Ending’s Mood and Final Image: Just like you want to think about the first impression, it’s important to consider the final image. Where will your readers rest? What feeling do you want to leave them with? What do you want them to see in their mind’s eye (or hear in their mind’s ear, or smell in their mind’s nose)? You can end by coming full circle, bringing us back to the first perspective or image, what you gave us in the first poem. Maybe something has changed, or maybe not. Another possibility is to imagine a narrative arc. If the poems are about you, is there something about you that changed along the way? You could end by contrasting the mood of the opening with the ending: if you started with agitated anger, you could end on a quiet, restful note, or vice versa. Or contrasting imagery: if you opened with a river, you could end with a sand dune or a skyscraper.
- Know Who Your Poetry Collection Is For: My poetry book Baggage Claim is dedicated to “everyone whose hometown is a suitcase.” Originally I had a whole list of people (third culture kids, foster kids, military brats, and so on). But this list grew to an unwieldy size and I realized that the people whose hometown is a suitcase will recognize themselves in that description, or in the poems themselves. While these poems specifically grew out of my own experiences growing up in four countries on three continents, some threads will connect to others’ lives. As for those who don’t know what it’s like to grow up on the move, I do hope there’s something in the book for them, but they’re not my primary audience. When I realized this, I knew I didn’t have to explain anything. A friend of mine recommended writing a poem about what it was like to make friends at new schools every couple of years. It was a good suggestion. But since I had determined my primary readership would already know, I was able to set the idea to one side, maybe for a future project. When you pinpoint what your readers will recognize, your decisions about what to include and how to craft the throughline will flow more easily.
Putting together a poetry collection can feel intimate and challenging. Take your time and try things out. And then one day call it done and send it out into the world. It doesn’t have to be perfect. And you can always write more poems. You can always create a new collection with a new throughline for a new audience.
(c) Marion Lougheed
About Marion Lougheed’s poetry collection Baggage Claim:
By the time Marion Lougheed turned eighteen, she’d moved house eleven times. When she was seven, her family flew from Canada to Benin. Later they moved back to Canada, and then to Belgium and Germany. She went to school in three languages.
This poetry collection is for all her fellow child migrants, third culture kids, hippie kids, cross-culture kids, missionary kids, foster kids, refugees, military brats, and other displaced, uprooted, and mobile children.
Original illustrations by Sarah Balsley, an artist with a mobile childhood of her own.
Order your copy online here.
And see here for more Writing.ie Resource pieces on creating your own poetry collection.
