Discover 7 new ways to think about your poem's title. Remember to subscribe for more weekly posts like this here.

The title of a poem is not just for Christmas. A title can surprise, beguile, intrigue, shock, but they should never be dull - with the possibilities at your disposal, there’s really no excuse for a poor title. And particularly now when the reader’s attention is stretched and the demands upon their attention have never been higher. If your title is to do one thing it is to cut through, whether that’s with one well chosen word, or a first line promoted to the place of the title, or a question.

Choice

And that word ‘choice’ is so important: what do you want to reveal in the title and what do you want to withhold? It can be a fine balancing act, but as I’ve written before, balance is what makes great artwork, or rather, what makes great art work.  

Before or After?

Whether your title comes first, or after you’ve written your poem, or somewhere in the middle, it should be adding something to the poem.Titles are that, in my view, often neglected part of a poem. For many the title is an afterthought and a space to fill above a poem. In the course of this article I want to persuade you otherwise, and to think of the title as a crucial moment to engage the reader’s attention, and add another dimension to the poem that’s underneath it. With titles comes opportunity, and with that opportunity comes a responsibility to make the most of it. There are so many possibilities with titles, and what follows is my own, concise way to navigate the different types of title you may choose. There are many more ways to craft a title but for the sake of brevity I’ve selected the following seven, and also brought to bear my own preferences.

THE SEVEN WAYS

1. The Question

‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways’ is a great example of the question as a title. The great thing about a question as a title is that it goes on to frame everything that follows. Try this out and you’ll see that as a writer it goves you something to play against with your lines, and also forms a central thread through the poem, one where everything you write is in response to the question. And even if you’re evading the question this becomes an interesting device in itself.

2. The Run-On Title

By this I mean a title which functions as a first line. These are great in giving a poem a sense of momentum right from the start. It allows you to really grab the reader’s attention with a longer title than usual and also to pique their interest and make them want to read on, whereas a poem entitled ‘Hope’ might make them switch off right away. 

3. The Single Word Title

Heaney’s ‘Digging’ or Michael Longley’s ‘Ceasefire’ or Sylvia Plath’s ‘Daddy’ are classic examples of the single word title. I suppose the greatest effect of a single word is that it intrigues the reader and speaks to the many different interpretations of the poem. In ‘Digging’ for example, yes there is actually physical digging going on, but Heaney is also referring to a more metaphorical digging, as in a digging into memory, the past, digging into why he writes poetry. The title, while one word, highlights and emphasises the plurality and ambiguity a single word can have. The power of the single word title is in the depth of the word’s etymology, i.e. all the various things it can mean. 

4. The Meditation or ‘On...’

‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’ by Keats is a classic example of the poem which can take a subject and explore it, logically, imaginatively, disgruntedly, however your want. 

I’ve got a poem in my second collection, Stay, entitled ‘Meditation on Ikea’ where I take Ikea and use it as a way of thinking about life on earth in relation to the universe. There are many possibilities with this, and simply titling your poem ‘meditation on’ doesn’t necessarily mean you need to stick to that subjec the whole way through, in fact it might even make it more original to go off piste, but then again, when is going off piste not more interesting?

5. ‘Ode on…’  or ‘In Praise of...’

An ode is a poem written specifically to praise or celebrate something. Some of the most famous being Keats’s ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’. Alexander Pope’s Ode on Solitude is another one to look at. I’ve written poems entitled ‘In Praise of Parmesan’ and ‘In Praise of Artisans’ in my most recent collection here. The ode is a lovely form of poem as it allows the poet to celebrate and focus on the positives of something, but you may also use it to contrast and undermine the title in an ironic fashion - these types f contrasts can yield great results. 

6. Direct Address: ‘To…’ 

Robert Burn’s ‘To a Mouse’ is among the most famous of poems addressed to someone or something. The genius of this poem is that Burns takes a tiny creature and confers upon it universal significance, and through this monologue to a tiny rodent probes the relationship of humanity to animals; it’s really a poem about how we can live responsibly and sustainably in the world alongside nature. Such a contemporary theme, and to think it was written in 1785... you’d almost think our pressing ecological concerns are nothing new... I suppose that’s because they’re not. Anyway, all of this from a title. To those of you who always come up with your title after you’ve written a poem, might want to try this style of title in order to give you a starting point.

7. Untitled?

In saying all of this, you could always leave your poem untitled. When Shakespeare wrote his sonnets and indeed before this, the titling of poems was really for practical purposes, as in labelling the poem for the purposes of indexing as opposed to giving them any intrinsic aesthetic qualities in themselves. His sonnets are either known by numbers, for example, or their first lines. The difficulty of not giving your poem a title is that it doesn’t really help the reader categorise your work as it doesn’t give it any identifiable tag. But maybe that’s what you’re going for, and, if your are inclined toward a more post-modern sensibility, maybe this wrongfooting and playing with the reader’s expectation and prejudice is actually what you’re after, in which case you can discount everything I’ve just written above this line. 

Further reading: Matthew Sweeney writes more about titles here, and Anne Ferry’s book The Title to the Poem is another great work on this topic. 

If you enjoyed this post, remember to subscribe here. And if you’re already a subscriber you can support my work by buying The Jotter Premium Plan.