Need Help With A Poetry Assignment? Help is Here- Read On!

An Acrostic Poem uses the letters in a 'topic word' to create the lines of a poem. Here is an Acrostic Poem my son and I worked on for his creative writing class:

FOOTBALL

Fight until we win

Over a ball made of pigskin

On the field, the band is playing

The Victory plaque we’ll be displaying

Because we’re Vikings, 6A Champions of the State

All other teams will have to wait

Like it or not, we’ll beat their team

Living the life, making good on the dream.

Notice how all of the lines in the poem describe the word 'Football.'

A ballad is a poem that tells a story. Songs are often called ballads because they have two or more stanzas and they are the same melody. Here is an example of a silly ballad my son and I wrote for some funny old neighbours we used to have. (Ballads should be about love and romance)

The Ballad of Joey and Janet

Janet and Joey were young at heart
He was a caddy, she drove the golf cart.
The met at work, on a rainy day
When all the golfers couldn’t play
When all the golfers couldn’t play
 
He was cleaning his clubs
She was driving around
She bumped into his bag and it fell to the ground.
She apologized for the bump and the shove
And he knew right away he was falling in love,

And he knew right away he was falling in love.

A cinquain poem is a verse of five lines that cannot rhyme.

Line 1 should be one word that is a subject (noun)

Line 2 should be two words, adjectives that describe line 1

Line 3 should be three words that are action verbs and they should relate to line 1

Line 4 should be four words that are your feelings, or even a small sentence that relates to line 1

Line 5 should be one word which should be a summation word and a synonym of line 1

Here is a Cinquain poem my son did on his favourite basketball team:

Nuggets

Nuggets

Phenomenal, amazing

Jumping, shooting, driving

Best team in NBA

Nuggets

A clerihew is a four line poem and the first line should have a name- so it talks about someone. The clerihew should be funny- or it should put the person you're talking about in an funny/odd light. The rhyme scheme is AABB.

As an example, here is a clerihew my son wrote:

Johnny Drake

My next door neighbour Johnny Drake

Had a cottage on the lake

In that lake he had a boat

But it had a hole and wouldn’t float.

A couplet poem is usually a pair of lines and they have the same rhyming scheme.

Here is an example of a couplet poem:

Ben and Carter

There was a boy named Carter

Who thought he was a lot smarter

Than his older brother Ben

Who repeated fourth grade again.

Limericks are funny poems that often start with 'There once was a..' There are all sorts of limericks out there, and some of them probably shouldn't be repeated but I love them anyway! They should be five lines long and have a rhyming scheme where lines 1,2 and 5 rhyme and lines 3 and 4 rhyme.

My dad came up with this little ditty and I still laugh every time I think about it:

The Man From New Zealand

There was a man from New Zealand

Who was thrown in jail for stealin,

He laid on his back

And out he spat

A big goober that hung from the ceiling.

The sonnet is a fourteen line poem often associated with Shakespeare. There are actually two types of sonnets but the Shakespearean one is what is taught in most schools. There are three quatrains and a couplet, and they follow this rhyming scheme scheme: abab, cdcd, efef, gg.

Here is an example of a sonnet my son wrote (again it's about football!)

Twelve More Hours

When I go to bed at night, I fall asleep very fast

I am so tired from school and weights.

I want to play video games and I really try to last

But I feel my eyes droop when it gets sort of late.

Getting up on time is always the hope,

And I listen carefully for my alarm.

I hit snooze several times and I know there’s no hope

Of sleeping too late, so it causes no harm

When I get up I think ‘This is crazy, too early!’

But I go down the stairs, pour some juice and I eat

Even though I’m in a daze and my hair is all curly

I go to the kitchen and just take a seat.

Each dawn is a new day, I think once I’m fed

That there is only twelve more hours until I go back to bed.

I hate haiku poems. I think they are ridiculous and pointless for high school students to learn, and they are more for grade school kids who are just learning how to write poetry. Nonetheless, here is an example of one that I wrote.

Daffodils

Daffodil flowers

Look so beautiful in bloom

Yellow sunshine

Thanks for reading this article! I hope that you found it if you are searching for some poem examples! Happy writing!