From Chaos to Cohesion: The Art of Arranging a Poetry Collection
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Putting together a poetry collection is more than just gathering your best poems — it’s about creating a cohesive reading experience. The way your poems are arranged shapes the reader’s journey, guiding them through shifting emotions, themes, and revelations.
So how do you transform a collection of pieces into something greater than the sum of its parts?
You might initially be asking yourself if you have enough poems for publication. Based on industry standards, a full-length poetry collection typically falls between 48 and 120 pages, while a chapbook is a shorter collection, usually 18 to 40 pages (and often centred around a specific theme). When collecting your poems into a manuscript, there are a few key formatting guidelines I recommend following:
Use a classic serif font like Times New Roman or Garamond, size 12.
Poems are typically single-spaced, with a double space between stanzas if needed.
Each poem should start on a new page, even if it’s short — this provides breathing room and maintains pacing.
Once you have your favourite poems assembled, it’s time to shape your collection. One of the biggest challenges is deciding how to arrange them. Should they be grouped by theme? Presented chronologically? Divided into sections? Based on my editorial background and my own experience assembling a poetry manuscript, I’ve developed a structured approach to help you refine your collection for the greatest impact.
1. Establish a Structure: Sections or Seamless Flow?
First, decide whether your collection will have distinct sections or flow seamlessly from beginning to end.
Sectioned collections: Sections divide poems into thematic or chronological groups, often using headings or breaks. When I was assembling my own poetry collection, None of This Belongs to Me, I was drawing from a decade’s worth of poetry, each piece tied to a distinct era of my life. The result was a collection with four clear thematic sections: “Repeat Offenders” (the girlhood era), “Poetry Wants My Imaginary Boyfriends” (the heartbreak era), “None of This Belongs to Me” (the nanny era), and “Unorganized Territory” (the self-love era). Each section title was taken from a poem within that section, using the poem’s title or a line from the body of the poem. Headings can also be numbered or indicated with a symbol and page break.
Seamless collections: These move fluidly from poem to poem, relying on subtle connections between themes and moods. Ross Gay’s Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude achieves this through continuity of voice/tone and recurring imagery, without clear divisions.
To determine what works best for your manuscript, ask yourself:
Are there distinct themes, eras, or emotional shifts that warrant sectioning?
Does your collection follow an arc that benefits from uninterrupted flow?
2. Define the Overall Arc
A poetry collection, like a novel, benefits from a sense of movement or transformation. Consider different ways your poems could be arranged:
Chronologically: If your poems reflect different life stages, arranging them in order of experience can create a sense of narrative. Though the poems in None of This Belongs to Me weren’t necessarily arranged in the order they were written, the collection, across the four sections, followed a loose chronology — one that felt true to the emotional arc of coming of age. It begins in childhood and unfolds through the complexities of adolescence and young adulthood, navigating first love, loss, and, eventually, the tender beginnings of self-acceptance.
Thematically: Grouping poems by shared motifs — love, loss, location, nature, seasons — can create a sense of unity. Barbara Nickel’s Domain is a good example of this. Here, the poems are organized by theme into seven sections, each named after a room in a house: “Master Bedroom,” “Girls’ Room,” “Living Room, “Utility Room,” “Kitchen,” “Boys’ Room,” and “Storage Room.”
Emotional journey: Some collections move from darkness to light, from grief to healing, or from innocence to experience. Mary Oliver’s Blue Horses takes the reader on a journey through grief, confusion, and frustration, reflecting on mortality and the search for meaning, and culminates in a sense of gratitude and a hope for a kinder world.
Think about how you want your reader to feel as they move through your collection. What is the story your poems tell together?
3. Begin with a Hook, End with Impact
The first and last poems in your collection are crucial. They set the tone and leave a lasting impression.
Opening poem: A short, engaging piece can serve as an invitation into your world. Rhea Tregebov’s Talking to Strangers opens with a short, striking prose poem, “What We Are Left,” that functions as a kind of overture for themes of family and grief.
Closing poem: Ending on a strong, resonant note gives readers a sense of closure. Long poems often work well here, allowing space for reflection. Talking to Strangers closes with a long poem dedicated to the author’s late sister, “Behold: Notes Towards an Elegy.”
4. Lay Out Your Poems & Find the Flow
Once you’ve gathered your poems, lay them out in a Word document or print them out and arrange them physically. Seeing them side by side can help you identify connections and gaps.
Consider:
Are similar themes too close together?
Do certain poems feel like natural transitions?
Does the pacing allow for emotional variation? (Too many heavy poems in a row can feel overwhelming.)
Read through multiple times, experimenting with different sequences until the collection feels right.
5. Cut the Excess: Kill Your Darlings
Of all the challenges in putting together a poetry collection, cutting poems might be the toughest. As writers, we often become emotionally attached to certain pieces — because they hold personal meaning or because they took forever to perfect — but not every poem will serve the bigger picture. If your collection has a high enough page count, you might start to think about which poems can be removed to avoid redundancy. That’s where the “kill your darlings” adage comes into play (painful, but necessary).
Sometimes, a poem you love just doesn’t fit, or maybe you have two that hit the same note, and one is clearly stronger. Sometimes, less is more, and the space you leave between poems heightens the overall impact of the collection.
Ask yourself:
Does each poem contribute something unique to the collection?
Are there any poems that are too similar to one another or feel redundant?
Could the collection be more powerful if it were tighter, with only the most essential and impactful pieces?
For commiseration purposes, I’ll share that I was recently told by a trusted editor that I needed to cut a poem from my newest manuscript because I already had too many poems about cats.
Remember, the goal is not to preserve every piece you’ve ever written but to craft a cohesive, impactful experience for your reader.
(To learn more about the art of making cuts, see our “Killing Your Darlings: Learning to Love Ruthless Editing” blog post.)
6. Refine & Get a Second Opinion
Once you have an order that feels solid, take a step back. Then:
Read your collection aloud to sense the rhythm and flow.
Have a trusted reader or editor go through it — fresh eyes can catch patterns or lulls you might miss.
Be open to rearranging as needed; refining a poetry collection is an iterative process.
Figuring out the order of your poetry collection is an art — and honestly, it can be one of the trickiest parts of the process. I know I’ve struggled with it! So if you find yourself rearranging poems for the hundredth time, be patient with yourself. You aren’t alone. Get a second opinion, of course, but also trust your gut and your vision for your book. Whether you’re leaning toward structured sections, a narrative arc, or a more intuitive flow, the goal is the same: to shape a reading experience that feels intentional and impactful. Thoughtful arrangement can turn a strong collection into something truly unforgettable.
Ellie Sawatzky is a FriesenPress editor, a creative writing instructor, and the author of the poetry collection None of This Belongs to Me (Nightwood Editions, 2021). A past finalist for the Bronwen Wallace Award and recipient of CV2's Foster Poetry Prize, her work has been published in The Walrus, Canadian Literature, The Maynard, The Ex-Puritan, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC and lives and relies on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations (Vancouver) where she is currently at work on her sophomore poetry collection.
