Slice the Poem Pie: Arranging Your Collection

For those of you starting to put together your first poetry collection, or are thinking about doing so, let me first say, “Congratulations on getting enough solid material together for a collection — and Hurrah! for shoring up your courage and confidence. You can do this.”

If you’ve been waiting to have enough previously published poems to include in the collection, you’ll want to know that different publishers have particular expectations for the number of already published works that should appear in one of “their” books. The number typically ranges between no more than ¼ to ½ of the poems included, although sometimes poetry collections might consist of all published works that have not been previously collected under the same title. It may help your decisions, as you curate your poems, to research book publishers at the same time; a list of your top prospects and their publishing guidelines could inspire which poems you include, as well as how you arrange them within your manuscript.

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On the average, a manuscript collection of “new” poetry usually contains 75% unpublished works. Collections of “selected works,” on the other hand, may contain less than 25% of unpublished poems.

One of the questions I hear most often from clients who are working on poetry manuscripts concerns the arrangement of poems: Does the arrangement make sense?

There are many personal variables to consider in arrangement, so you’ll want to contemplate the factors that may play parts in your material — chronology, locations, specific relationships, repetitions (e.g., of topics, poetic forms, message), sequential wordplay — and experiment with the pleasing combinations in which you could group your poems. Dividing your collection into 3 to 4 sections, with enlightening headings, has been a popular format for decades, and remains the format currently favored by literary publishers. You may have other ideas in mind for formatting and arranging, and this may work out for you, however, again, be sure to research your prospective publishers’ requisites.

The main reason that publishers (and a lot of poets) like to work within headed sections is that dividing the poems into “chapter-like” parts allows these individual works to function in story fashion. 10 poems threaded together under one heading can bring cohesiveness to each poem, which might not otherwise appear to exist.

As an editor, I once played with this concept in one of The Centrifugal Eye’s most popular journal issues ever, “Story Poems”. 3 poems each, by unique authors, were selected and arranged under “chapter” headings to create conceptual stories. The resulting responses of pleasure and excitement from readers were beyond my expectation.

Another reason poets take advantage of sectioning their collections is because it can be difficult to write the number of similarly themed poems required for a collection of a singular topic. Full collections are expected to contain 60-100 poems (booklets of fewer poems are designated as chapbooks). Sections with varying titles can help corral groups of dissimilar poems in a way that forms logical, aesthetic sense.

However you decide to slice your poem pie — in other words, arrange your collection — do take the time to think through all the potential connections between the poems you include. If you do, you’ll probably find more publishers responsive to your manuscript than if you throw together 75 or so pages of poems at random.

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