Poems for every occasion
Most people writing a poem have a reason and a deadline. Each page below covers what that kind of poem needs, what to leave out, and hands you a generator already set up for it.
Birthday
A birthday poem has one job: to make the person feel seen.
Wedding
Most wedding poems are written by someone who does not write poems, for a room of a hundred people, under a deadline.
Funeral
Writing about someone you have lost is hard in a particular way: the feeling is enormous and the words available are small and worn out.
Anniversary
An anniversary is about accumulation.
Love letter
The problem with love poems is that everything obvious has been said perfectly by someone else already.
Thank you
A thank you poem works when it proves you noticed.
Apology
Most written apologies fail the same way: they spend more words on why it happened than on what happened.
Graduation
Graduation poems tend to be written from above: advice from someone older to someone younger.
For a mother
Poems for mothers are the hardest to keep honest, because the available language is so heavily worn.
For a father
Poems for fathers often run into the same wall: the relationship is real and complicated, and the available language is hero, provider, my rock.
Friendship
Friendship is the relationship we have the fewest set phrases for, which makes it the easiest to write about honestly and the easiest to get wrong by borrowing the language of love poems..
Sympathy
Writing to someone who has just lost a person is mostly an exercise in not making it worse.
Retirement
A retirement poem marks the end of something most people spent forty years inside.
New baby
New baby poems are usually written to a person who cannot read, to be kept and read much later.
Get well
Get well poems live on a narrow ledge.
Christmas
Christmas has more worn-out imagery attached to it than any other occasion in English.
Valentine's Day
Valentine's poems carry an extra burden: the recipient knows the date forced your hand.
For a teacher
Teachers receive a great many cards saying thank you for everything.
For a pet
People are often slightly embarrassed about how much a pet's death affects them, which is why so many pet poems reach for a jokey register they do not mean.