ABSTRACT
Free verse is a very liberating form for young poets, and for a number of reasons. Free verse is the best form of poetry for children wanting to write about their own thoughts, reflections, memories and experiences. A display in the classroom of the varying forms of free verse can be an effective way of exposing children to free verse on an ongoing basis. This chapter provides a few things to consider when writing free verse poems: as with all forms of poetry, divide the poem into verses, use metaphoric language, keep the lines quite short, step the lines, free verse has rhythm too, think about where to use line breaks, use dialogue, and read it out loud as readers write. It presents an exercise, which is a useful way of asking children to consider line breaks and stanzas in free verse. The chapter also presents short extracts from popular novels that can be chopped up into free verse.
