Studying Classic Poetic Forms

For the past few weeks I have been studying classic poetic forms. I’m doing this because I want to be a better writer, but also because I’ve written a character who is a poet, yet he never writes any poetry. I want him to be a believable poet, so I need to become familiar with poetry.

I’ve written a single poem so far and just writing that one poem has shown me that it’s not impossible to write classic poetry if you go about it in a systematic way.

What I find that I struggle with the most is the actual keeping of the form. That is, the rhyme scheme, the meter, the number of stanzas. A quick search online netted me some worksheets to help me write a sonnet – which is great! But I couldn’t find any free forms for a villanelle or a sestina.

So, I made some. For a villanelle and a sestina, at least. I’ve found the forms extremely helpful, which is why I converted them to PDFs and am making the available here. They are super basic and you’ll need to know about how the poetic form works before they’re actually useful. But, if you need them, here they are.

I hope these forms help you!

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