High School
Worksheets
Write Backwards Poetry
Many different styles of poetry have been developed over the centuries. Some styles are complicated, while others are more straightforward. Some are constructed with rhyme and meter, and others are built on shapes or syllables. The study of poetry can be fascinating for those who love language and word play. As you study the different styles, you may be inspired to create a new form of poetry. That's what happened to me during my research. I invented backwards poetry. In a backwards poem, the rhyme comes first!
In this form of poetry, the rhyming words are placed at the beginning of lines rather than at the end. That's backwards - the opposite of the way rhymes normally occur in rhyming poetry. Since the rhyme comes first, the poet can utilize words that aren't normally found at the end of a sentence. One of the benefits of writing backwards poetry is that the poet is able to write his or her lines without forcing a rhyme at the end of each one.
There are four possible rhyme schemes for backwards poetry. For a four-line poem (also known as a quatrain), a poet may choose to use one of the following four patterns: aaaa, abab, aabb, or abba.
