Blank verse is unrhymed iambic pentameter, meaning it has 10 syllables with five stresses or beats per line. It’s incredibly versatile and not only one of my favoured poetic forms, but also the chosen form of poets like Wordsworth, Coleridge and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, let alone Shakespeare in many of his most famous plays. You can read my poem ‘In Praise of Blank Verse’ here. Far from being repetitive and old-school, my view is this poetic form, when handled well, brings the music of everyday language to life. 

Tried and Tested

Wordsworth’s The Prelude, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Coleridge’s Frost at Midnight and Tennyson’s Ulysses are just some of the classic poems written in blank verse, so don’t just take my word for it. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey’s translation of the Aeneid (composed in 1540) is thought to be the first example of it in English. Robert Frost used it often in what we consider now to be curriculum staples such as ‘Mending Wall’ and ‘Out, Out, -’ So, it's no coincidence that some of the best poems in the English language have been written in this form. 

Form and Freedom

Blank verse offers a balance of freedom within a form. I like to think of it as a blank canvas within a frame i.e. it gives the writer limits but nothing overly oppressive; it gives the writer freedom but isn’t just a free-for-all. It gives the writer some boundaries to work against. This balance of form and freedom, I’d argue, make it a great form for contemporary poets and for writing about the energy, movement and change of contemporary life. If we think about the paintings of Jackson Pollock for example, there is a great sense of impulse and energy within a parameter. It is this tension which makes blank verse special.

Narrative

Another point of difference for blank verse is its scope. Paradise Lost and The Prelude are book length poems, sustained or facilitated by the form of blank verse. They allow for voices, characters, scenes, dialogue, description, chapters, sections, interjections… I could go on. It’s a fairly limitless form to be writing in, particularly when retelling a story. I suppose in this sense, it taps into the most ancient origin of poetry - storytelling, and our need to sit around a fire telling each other stories.

Rhythm

Iambic pentameter is at the heart of blank verse; the limits of blank verse are the limits of iambic pentameter. When handled well, this gives the form a sense of momentum and rhythm that, to me, is unrivalled in any other poetic form. With blank verse, sentences can go on and on and on, and it’s a test of the poet’s skill to see how long they can maintain it. I do think that blank verse is a test of a poet’s skill, which in turn means that it’s a way for poets to develop and stretch their handling of a sentence over many lines. I’ve always been interested in the relationship between the sentence and the line; indeed I think this is one of the unique elements that make poems different from other forms of writing. In fact, I think it’s really important to vary the stresses otherwise blank verse has the potential to become incredibly repetitive, so while having five stresses in a line is important, the order and placement of these stresses can change, for example you could start the line with a stressed syllable or end the line with an unstressed syllable. There are many ways to play around with the structure of the iambic line, and blank verse gives the poet the opportunity to do so. You could see it, even, as a poetic training ground. 

Originality: Breathe New Life into Old Form

When writing in a form like blank verse, there is an opportunity to take an ancient form and put your own stamp on it. I think this is one of the main reasons I enjoy writing in old forms like this, whether it’s the sonnet or rhyming couplets. In many ways, when we write in these forms, we’re communing the writers of the past and taking part in a very old and still ongoing conversation about how to use these forms and how they might take on new life in our contemporary world.

Where to Start and Where to End?

If this post has made you think about writing in blank verse, I’d recommend starting by reading some of the poems I mentioned at the beginning of this post. Before you launch into writing, read those poems and think about how they deal with the line of iambic pentameter, look at where they put the stresses, how they manage enjambment, how long their sentences go on for and more importantly, how they end the poem, as bringing a long poem like this to a conclusion can be difficult and one of the biggest challenges of writing in this form, however, when you do it, a great sense of accomplishment will await you.